


The Broken Saga

by khaleesian



Series: Norse of a different color [2]
Category: Thor - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Loki Angst, Loki Does What He Wants, M/M, Other, Rape/Non-con Elements, This might hurt a little, Thor Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-13
Updated: 2013-05-10
Packaged: 2017-11-25 10:54:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 5
Words: 54,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/638144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/khaleesian/pseuds/khaleesian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sequel to ‘the Song Unsung’ and it would be essential to read that first. AND LOOK UP AT THE WARNINGS. ALL OF THE WARNINGS. This story will end well but it will be a time getting there. You are just, as Loki would say, going to have to trust me.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Thievery

“As you will.” Loki shivered under Thor’s tongue. “I am not stopping you.”

Thor groaned, almost incoherent with lust. “Please!”

He scrabbled helplessly at the fastenings of Loki’s surcoat. He wasn’t drunk, or at least not _very_ drunk. He was at the pleasantest state of tipsiness when salt was the best spice but his fingers weren’t clever enough for Loki’s elaborate kit. And Loki’s collar was so wretchedly _high_ seemingly in direct proportion to how delicious his neck was. It was maddening.

“Loki, I want you.”  Thor mumbled into the back of Loki’s collar, his hands firmly tangled in the slashed leather sleeves that opened to thick woven silk underneath. There seemed to be as many buttons and buckles as stars in the sky above them. And Loki was still pretending to be more interested in his telescoping glass and the faraway stars than Thor’s mouth under his ear.

 “Not stopping you.” Loki repeated and then shuddered again as Thor bit down on his earlobe and tugged gently.

“You could help, you know.” Thor muttered grumpily as he wrapped his arms around Loki’s waist and attempted the clasps from what was technically the ‘right’ side. He squinted over Loki’s shoulder and fumbled with the infuriating fastenings.

“Help?” Loki raised his chin and importuned the heavens. “Help he requires. The mighty Thor. Defeated by tailoring.”

But he twitched his hips in a way that made Thor’s mouth water. Thor narrowed his eyes and thought _fine._

Thor growled and took firmer hold of Loki’s collar. “Hope you won’t miss this.”

“Miss…?”

Leather made an odd whine when it was wrenched in two. Loki laughed in pleasure as Thor succumbed to his baser instincts and rent the finely embroidered silk into rags. Buttons and buckles went flying as Thor stripped Loki down to his ivory underneath. Thor moaned with satisfaction, mouthing Loki’s warm flesh, breathing in his scent. 

And Loki was helping, _finally,_ shrugging free of his layers, turning to shove Thor back through the balcony doors. “What a drunken lout I’m blessed with. Surely there are tipsy wenches aplenty…”

“None sweet as you.” Thor breathed, pulling Loki up off of the floor for the last steps before he collapsed onto the bed with Loki writhing on top.

“Oh ho.” Loki smirked as he wrestled Thor quiescent underneath him with kisses, caresses and tugs on his hair. “Sweet! Sweet, am I? I think you are in the wrong room entirely, Odinson, there’s nothing sweet about me.”

“Mmmmmm.” Thor might’ve been agreeing or disagreeing, he didn’t know now with Loki’s nipple peaking under his tongue. He let Loki mutter some incantation that left them both stripped bare. He groaned again, glutted with pleasure, letting his thighs spread to draw Loki yet closer. He wanted to rub his scent all over Loki’s smooth flesh. He wove his hand into Loki’s hair and let Loki’s grasping fingers slip into his mouth.

Loki grinned devilishly, tilted his chin up to bare his long neck and murmured. “My king?”

*~*

“My king?”

It wasn’t a loud voice, in fact it was quite timorous for the halls of Asgard. But in the silence of the great hall even the most timid noise sounded loud, like a tiny pebble left ripples on the vastest ocean.

Thor stirred uneasily. He blinked. “Did you speak?”

The page had gone white with terror under Thor’s gaze. “My king, your war chief returns…”

It was Sif, Sif, of course, his finest general. She strode up through the silent crowd, dark and pale and…he beckoned her quickly so that she might report without needless ceremony.

She brought her fist to her breast, making a hurried obeisance. “Thor-king, their forces are consolidating even as they retreat.”

“But they do retreat.” Thor swallowed and drew his mind back to the matter at hand.

Sif bowed her head. She was too thin and still travel-stained. He found he could only glance a moment at the black wash of her hair. “I mistrust that it is their final act, my king. Their numbers have grown significantly since…”

She trailed off.

“You suspect that they will attack again after some succor?” Thor said quietly. He had no idea how their enemy rejuvenated and re-victualed themselves, only that it did happen somehow.

“Undoubtedly.” Sif bowed and he noted that Volstagg had accompanied her. That left Hogun and Fandral leading his east and west divisions, Tyr in the north and Freyr to the south. He nodded unconsciously.  Good hands. Strong, capable hands. He looked down at his own trembling hand, at the ring on it and clenched his fist to stop it shaking.

“When will you need me again?” Thor tried to speak normally, both hoping and dreading that she should say ‘at once’.

 She sighed and looked up at him, brow still furrowed. “We can spare some time, my king, but we cannot…”

 _Fall headlong into grief_. Was he doomed for the rest of his days to have all sentences addressed to him trail off into embarrassed, fearful silence?  He rubbed his mouth, trying to feel how deeply he’d been scowling at her without realizing it.

“You will stay for the…” He trailed off himself, cursing his inability to shape the word.

“Of course I will.” But he could see dread in her eyes, veiling the sorrow.

Heid entered the back of the hall and folded her hands, bowing in Thor’s direction.

“Walk with me.” Thor strode off the dais, making no courteous leave-taking from the rest of his officers and advisors.  Sif fell into step behind him and then drew beside him as they left the hall, trailing Heid’s tiny figure.

“I thought their back was broken.” Thor spoke shortly.

“They were deeply crippled.” Sif acknowledged. “Perhaps I am being over-cautious, but a crippled man may still strike a death-blow.”

“It is well, Sif.” Thor snorted. “I will relish the chance to send a few more into the ether.”

She bobbed her head. “And I.”

“Once it was suggested…” Thor did not say by whom, that would soon be obvious. “That Heimdall might open the Bifrost on Muspelheim.” Thor said soft enough for her ears only. “And leave it open.”

Sif blanched and looked directly up at him, eyes hard. She also spoke low, but firmly. “I shall not give that order, Thor, you must do it yourself. If you have lost all honor as well as…”

Again, she was too kind or too clever to say the name aloud. But she at least, did not seem to fear that he might suddenly go mad. He was struck by the realization that this late circumstance had seen the strength of Asgard’s women far outweighing that of their men. Heid and Frigga awaited them in the dim room at the end of the corridor.

“We don’t need to.” Sif’s voice came to him from what felt like a long distance. “We can go back.”

Thor blinked and realized that he had slowed from a stride to a shuffle. He straightened. This was unworthy of him. He entered the dark room and stopped in front of the broad golden bed where his father slept, renewing himself. _Wake up._ Thor thought for the thousandth time. _My need is dire, father._

Heid and Freya had labored as fast as they were able to replicate Odin’s great bed. But the duplicate was longer and narrower; the design more closely resembled that of a longship. Thor steeled himself to look at the wood, the linens, the scintillating gold that protected…

“Thor.” Sif was at his elbow and Heid tilted her face up with a fatalistic expression as thunder shook the hall.

“It is well done, Heid.” Thor rasped, feeling like he was suffocating. Frigga wrapped her hand around his waist and they stood between the two gilded beds. “I can hardly tell the difference.”

She nodded even as she knew it for a lie. The difference was palpable. Because Odin was sleeping and Loki was dead.

*~*

“Are you going to pout all day?” Loki asked, not raising his head from his book.

Thor threw a boot at him and when Loki looked up at him with an arched eyebrow, he made the face that meant Loki was lucky it wasn’t Mjölnir. “I do **not** pout.”

“Yes, you do.” Loki returned infuriatingly. “Your nostrils flare out like this.”

Loki flared his nostrils and set his chin in an almost perfect approximation of Thor’s pout.

“Why will you not simply come with me?” Thor hoped it sounded like a measured request and not like a whine.

Loki sighed and threw his head back to bang it on the top of his chair. “Would you go if you didn’t have to? It’s going to be frightfully dull. And I’m not the Prince of Asgard, so…”

“No, of course I wouldn’t go if I didn’t have to. But I never _asked_ to be Prince of Asgard either.” Thor folded his arms and scowled in earnest.

Loki blinked slowly. “And it looks as though the weather might be stormy with a good chance of self-pity.”

“What I _did_ choose.” Thor pointed an accusing finger. “The one thing I have _chosen_ was who I could have by my side as I was being slowly bored to death. But apparently I am to be abandoned in my hour of need.”

He folded his arms again and turned away, hunching his shoulders.

Loki said something very slangy in some jötunn dialect that he probably thought Thor didn’t understand.

Thor whirled and threw his other boot. “I am not!”

Loki sighed and didn’t say anything for a long moment. “The first part is just waving and smiling, right?”

“There’s a processional.” Thor said shortly, feeling very put upon.

“Hmmmmmm.” Loki’s chair creaked. When Thor turned to look at him hopefully, Loki had doubled. He was examining his mirror image, twisting tendrils of sei _ð_ to make him more solid and perfect. Thor’s twin blinked at him over Loki’s shoulder, smiling blandly.

“Loki…” Thor was truly never, ever going to get used to this.

“These fellows can see to the nodding and smiling.” Loki twitched his fingers and Thor’s duplicate cocked his head and looked less slow-witted. Loki made a shooing motion and they left, bowing politely. “They can even exchange a few pleasantries in a pinch. We’ll switch places with them before the banquet.”

“So you will come?” Thor sagged in relief. Loki stepped to him and twisted fingers through Thor’s beard.

“Oh, I wouldn’t miss it.” Loki purred. “But when you stick your lower lip out like that, it gives me all kinds of ideas.”

*~*

Heid spread her hands and the glittering golden glow that surrounded the bodies sparkled before fading to a gentle luminescence.

“Will it keep him?” Thor asked, trying not to choke on his despair. It was a torment now, but he could dimly imagine a future moment when looking at Loki’s still form might give him a small modicum of…something.

“I don’t know.” Heid sighed. “I’m no frost giant…I’m not even Aesir, lest you forget.”

“Heid.” Thor growled.

“Loki was always so betwixt and between.” Heid folded her arms into her black robe. “I have done my best for you, Thor. I believe it will keep him until you’ve decided what you want to do.”

What he wanted to do was crawl into the casket and hide under Loki’s hair, but all their eyes on him kept him upright. “Odin’s law decrees that we must put him on a pyre within ten days.” Thor sighed heavily. “But by my lights, Loki will never be devoured by fire.”

“No.” Sif agreed at once.

“Has anyone sent to Jötunheim?” He thought he’d given the order to do that, but perhaps he’d just dreamed doing it.

Frigga nodded into his shoulder. “They have not returned any message, but it is only half a day.”

Thor clenched his fists. Time was turning oddly mercurial lately. He felt it rushing around him like a great river while he was anchored to the ground.

“They may have some rituals that we know nothing of,” Sif said.

Thor closed his eyes and concentrated on breathing as he nodded. Any excuse not to have to do something unequivocal, anything that kept Loki out in the open air was a blessing, a rope he would snatch at. “A vigil then, until we have word from them. Sew slowly, mother.”

“His garb shall be the finest I can muster, my darling.” Frigga’s voice thinned at the last and her eyes glistened. He turned away from her but still felt the weight of her gaze as it turned to Heid.

Heid nodded and started gently urging him out of the room. She seemed to share a speaking glance with Sif who started to chivvy him down the hallway. “We will be well-attended soon. Many have already sent condolence and more will come with gifts. You should bathe and dress.”

“I am dressed. I am bathed.” Thor returned, after her words worked their way through his maze of thoughts.

“Again.” Frigga said firmly.

Thor stopped. “Why?”

“Because there’s blood all over your tunic, Thor.” Sif said softly. “You broke Hermod’s nose for talking too loudly.”

****

Unsurprisingly, it was a woman who was first to find the courage to approach him as he stood at the head of the hall, staring down into Loki’s open coffin. There was a constant current of low murmur as his vassals came with funereal tributes.

“Thank you for coming, my lady.” Thor dipped his head, acknowledging Grimhild.

“I could do no less, Thor-King.” Grimhild dropped a low curtsy. “You and…you were so kind to us when we lost brave Sigurd, I could not do otherwise in this dark hour.”

“I thank you.” Thor tried to say something less inane and then shut his mouth with a click.

“You have battled so hard to keep this realm safe.” Grimhild pressed her hands together in a respectful obeisance. 

 _And made myriad sacrifices._ Thor thought, taking a long swallow of mead.

“He looks very peaceful.”

Grimhild had long been matriarch and queen of the mist lands and doubtless her courtesy was honed to a fine edge. Thus she did not gasp when Thor squeezed his chalice until it shattered in his hand. She just pulled her skirts back from the spill that a cringing attendant quickly swept away.

“Forgive me, lady.” Thor shaped the words very carefully. “Indeed, he does look peaceful.”

Grimhild had clasped her hands tightly. Her rings clicked as her grip tightened and she lowered her voice to a less-than-regal tone.

“I could…” She trailed off. “I know you Aesir profess to have no great love of sorcery, but surely the gift must be the best of the giver.”

Thor managed to shift his gaze to her for a moment.

“Death offers the great forgetting, but leaves those left behind struggling. Memories.” She sighed. “Truly it is kinder indeed to be among the dead.”

“Lady.” Thor beckoned and a pale servant brought him another chalice. “I would take it for a great boon if you would speak plainly.”

She did not quail, but grew mercifully businesslike. “I have the skill to make a potion that will make your memory…selective, shall we say? There is no need for you to suffer so, in thrall to the memory of your love.”

Thor considered for a moment as soon as the sense of her offer penetrated. Forget Loki? Marry the beautiful, yellow-haired Gudrun perhaps? He imagined himself with a golden, glowing wife and a handful of rosy-cheeked toddlers.

“A potion such as you gave to Sigurd.” Thor said flatly.  Ensorcelled to forget his beloved Brunhild until the moment she ate meat in his house as his sister-in-law.

She inclined her head, even as she stiffened.

“Because that worked so well?” Thor asked in an even duller tone. “For Sigurd, Brunhild and your dear daughter, Gudrun?”

She bowed her head again, with either shame or genuine humility. “Memory is an almost incurable malady, Thor-King. My efforts are meager compared to the food of heaven, but I can promise you a fair few years of peace.”

There was that word again ‘peace’. 

“I know how painful this must be.” She looked up at him and he thought perhaps that she was sincere and she did just want to spare him.

“It is like walking on blades, Lady. It is like breathing shards of glass.”  Thor folded his arms. “…but I will not give it over, for anything.”

*~*

“Loki, Loki, Loki!” Thor blundered toward the bed, alerted by the unconscious whimper. Loki was moaning, facedown and drooling on the blankets, like one taken in a fit. Thor shook him fiercely and then jerked back as Loki flailed out, butting his head up and back. Thor tightened his hands over Loki’s wrists as he fought back up into wakefulness, afraid that Loki would claw at his face or injure himself. “Wake up!”

“Oh, oh, oh,” Loki panted. “Fornjotnr’s cock…I just…” Thor could feel Loki’s heart pounding in his limbs as Loki struggled in the covers. “Just a…nightmare.”  Loki’s freed hands clutched the mattress; then he scraped the hair off his face harshly. He looked as wild and breathless as if he’d been fighting half a dozen warriors and he muttered: “That wasn’t real, that wasn’t real.”

Thor cautiously unpeeled the coverlet from its tangle around Loki’s shoulders and waist. Loki was almost bound by a heavy jumble of blankets, imprisoning him as he writhed. “Tell me what happened…not the spiders again?”

“No, it was…You were saying…” Loki caught his breath. It almost sounded like a sob. “Such cruel things to me, Thor.”

Thor swallowed. Loki slept so rarely….and he was only ever vulnerable when he slept. Thor could remember every time that Loki woke him, not screaming or struggling, but simply trembling and moaning as if some dread jailor had already stolen his wits and will. If Thor caught him just on waking he might deign to share the vaguest details and this one was new.

“What did I say?” Thor dared to come close enough to rub shoulders with Loki, thinking that he could rebut this dream-self, argue with him in Loki’s memory, slay him.

“Ah, I…” Loki turned his face up to the moonlight. He cracked into a bitter laugh. “I don’t remember now.”

That had to be true. Loki blinked, looking almost bewildered. “It’s just…gone.”

They sat for a moment etched in the silver light, as Loki’s harsh, heaving breath slowed.

“It was just a dream. Nothing in it was real.” Thor leaned in to nudge his chin against Loki’s jaw and Loki clasped his bicep, seeming unsure if he wanted to pull Thor close or push him away. “Hard for me to imagine that my tongue could ever let your icy blood, magpie.”

Loki shuddered once. Already he was cooling, quieting, now he seemed armored and girt with invisible weapons. “It was…just a dream.”

Thor put his arm around Loki’s shoulders delicately.

“Dark night yet.” Thor murmured into the fall of Loki’s hair. “You could be more comfortable.”

Loki pushed Thor down to the bed and slumped on top of him. Thor felt the chill as Loki shifted to his jötunn form; he relaxed as the hot bedding cooled. He breathed into Loki’s hair as Loki traced fingernails lightly through the hair on Thor’s chest and whispered once like a command: ‘just a dream’.

*~*

“Get out, get out, **get OUT**!” Faces were blurred now; he had no idea if he was bellowing at thralls or foreign kings. Their eyes were unpleasantly shiny, the gold glinting at him made his head hurt. He stumbled and kicked a casket of treasure meant for grave goods. He tried to breathe and not touch anything breakable which left him twisting his hands round Mjölnir’s haft. Within moments the vast hall was empty, but he still…there was no air in here. Thor wanted to press his face against the cold marble of the floor but Heid was sidling his way.

“Why are you left to me, you flame-haired witch?” Thor groaned.

“Just lucky I guess.” Heid wrinkled her nose. “I suppose others are not wont to forget that they are speaking to one who can open the heavens and strike them to ash with a thunderbolt at his ever-more-capricious whim.”

Thor took another draught, despairing. He would not do that, he would _never_ do that…but then he had just roared like a hurricane at a huddle of innocents for daring to be in the same room as his lover’s corpse.

“And you, the Phoenix of the Vanir?” Thor grated. “You believe you shall rise from your ashes?”

She laughed quietly, with only a hint of bitterness. “Ah, Thor, Thor…Loki stole all the glory in that vein, did he not? You never get proper credit for your wit.”

“Meager though it be.” Thor mumbled. Loki gave …had given him all the acknowledgment he desired. Thor was skewered unexpectedly by a memory of Loki laughing helplessly, holding his stomach, snorting and choking as Thor related former exploits in Alfheim in the dignified, studied language of a saga. There had been tears in Loki’s eyes by the time Thor had spoken of cuckolding some elf-prince, he had begged for mercy.

“You might not believe me.” Heid said without looking at him. “I know protesting my constancy would not move you. But I swore to serve the king in Asgard, and that means even if some fire demon sorcerer has cut the legs out from under him.”

Thor snorted in surprise and drained another tankard. “Am I so obviously lamed?”

“Well, not to them.” Heid shrugged.  The sky of Asgard had gone black for two days as Thor’s insatiable wrath had claimed three quarters of the remaining fire-demon invasion. By striking at Loki, the enemy had sounded their own death knell. But it had forced his own troops to retreat hastily as Thor’s blind agony hadn’t been very discerning.

“Where is he?”

Heid looked very wary. “What are you asking me?”

“I haven’t gone completely mad, Heid” Thor sighed. _Yet._ “The frost giants are not soulless.”

“Oh.” She paused and seemed to collect her thoughts. “Ah yes, well I imagine that Loki’s gone the way of all frosty flesh and…”

“Speak with a little more care, Bright One.” Thor warned her.

“He’s not a _draugr_.” Heid theorized. “He must be in their hereafter. They have their own, as do the dwarves, they are Ymir’s children too. Perhaps it looks like Utgard made whole.”

“Perhaps.” Thor upended his tankard and called for another. There was a tiny, whispered debate before the youngest page of all staggered over to him, his whole body taut under the weight of Thor’s mug. He handed it off without mishap and hared off back to the shadows.

“I really am very sorry, Thor.” When he could look at her again, he was surprised to see that her own pale green eyes looked so crestfallen. Seeing Heid without her cynicism was rather like seeing Loki without his malice…they both looked almost naked. “After all these long years, I truly was almost starting to like him.”

“If another person tells me he looks ‘peaceful’, I will rip up the Yggdrasil, Heid. I will shatter this realm and all to follow.” Thor promised grimly. “Loki’s not supposed to be _peaceful._ He wasn’t peaceful even when he _slept._ Loki _never_ looked peaceful, except for when….”

He coughed. Heid looked askance at him and he cleared his throat. “Well, that’s…personal. Any road….”

Heid’s eyebrows did a little jumping jig. “I will send so all know to refrain from using that term.”

“That’s not enough!”  Thor barked. He wrenched his fingers through his hair. “I cannot do what I am supposed to do; I cannot be who I am supposed to be anymore.”

He looked despairingly up at the lofty ceiling, feeling the full weight of the citadel as if it had been dropped on him. _You had no notion, did you father, that Asgard rested on such fragile foundations?_

“Thor-king, we can forgive much.” Heid said kindly, pushing her own chalice into his hands. “Just keep drinking.”

****

Thor lurched across to the feasting hall, which instantly hushed as soon as the torchlight caught his glower.

“Begone from my sight, Ketill Óspakr.” Thor growled. “I doubt not your fealty, but I have cause to doubt your sorrow.”

The warrior bowed his head and backed to the doorway. It seemed that others looked after him enviously. An abandoned bench somehow shuffled into Thor’s path and paid dearly for its crime. When he stood unimpeded again, the silence was absolute.

“Why do you not sing?” Thor roared as he set his weight wrong and stumbled to the floor. “Why do you not mourn as befits a warrior of Asgard and the king’s consort?”  He was flecked with saliva by the time he got that last bit out. His mouth was so full of bitterness; he could not wash it away with an ocean of ale. He had tried. He felt numb up to his chin, but it wasn’t the right kind of numbness, he needed to be _frozen_ , if only…

“Because, my king.” Volstagg panted around his shoulders as he tried to heft Thor back on to his feet. “It is not so long ago that you nearly beat a man to death for saying his name with less than what you deemed perfect respect.”

“Ymir’s icy tits,” is what Thor tried to say. It came out as a bereaved animal howl. Which is better, his father’s voice tormented him…mad king, dead king, no king?

“Shhhh.” Volstagg abandoned his attempt to get Thor fully upright. Instead he cradled Thor half-sitting, stroking Thor’s hair as if Thor were one of his own children. Thor wept, lashed by thoughts of his subjects’ terror. How his fell warriors now crept around the edges of the halls as their king paced the floors with less reason than a mad, snorting bull. He had been snatching tankards out of other men’s hands in the last hours, he had quaffed until he choked.

He beat his fist against the stone floor until it cracked, even as Volstagg tried so valiantly to quiet him.

For a moment, the dizziness cleared and he struggled to his feet. He jerked away from Volstagg’s embracing arm and rushed out of the hall. It was the deepest part of night and the corridors and galleries were mercifully unpeopled as he blundered through. Down to the gardens, out the eastern gate, he could not bear another wet, sympathetic eye upon him.  

Outside the citadel the air was mercifully cool and smelt neither of incense and magic or sulfur and death. He kept moving, stripping off his ceremonial garb.

He was stumbling now, waist deep in bramble and he swung Mjölnir like a scythe before him. She seemed heavier than she’d ever been before, as if all his strength was leaking out.

He was screaming suddenly, bellowing at the black sky and cold stars. If his hands had been free he would have torn at his own flesh, jerked out his hair. Mjölnir was suddenly anchor-heavy and her weight pulled him first into a stumble and then to a sprawl.

Grit scraped his cheek, mud oozed into his mouth.

And then merciful blackness.

****

“Hi, ho, hallllooo, barrel-creature!” A voice seemed to be coming from close by: a crooning, babbling voice.

Thor blinked up at the blue sky, and then squeezed his eyes shut and groaned. His head…all his bones felt like they were made of bronze, stiff and brittle and blazing hot in this bright sun. His brain felt all gooey like sticky soup in a copper basin.

“Yoooou are going to be making my nearer acquaintance very soon, yellow barrel.” The voice seemed to have some urgency as it spouted nonsense. “Might leave you sputtering, yes, yes.”

Thor gasped as his booted feet suddenly gave way to an icy chill and gushing wetness. He sat up with a stifled yelp. His vision exploded into a burst of dazzling, starfire brightness. He clapped his hands over his abused eyes and found that this two-pronged attack was simply that his weight had dragged him slowly down the sandy bank of a river and the sunlight on the water reflected the cheer of mid-morning. His boots had defended him as well as they could but the water…

The water had bunched itself up somehow; its constant flow seemed to have collected itself into a vaguely feminine shape. It was looking at him with an oddly liquid display of sympathy and alarm.

“Do you wish to rinse yourself, yellow barrel?” The water spirit offered kindly. “Or gasp and sink and turn blue?” She spoke as if either choice were equally fine.

“Uh.” Thor blinked very slowly. “I don’t…”

“Here.” A sudden clout of water struck him full in the face. “You seem to need a freshening.”

Thor squinted and delicately sluiced the water off his face and beard the best he could. “Ah…I…thank…you.”

Epically hungover and soaking wet did not seem the most auspicious start to the day, but he’d surely had worse…then he remembered and muffled a sob into his swiping hand.

“There, there…” The water spirit hoisted herself a little higher, becoming more feminine and human-like for a moment. “You’ve gone all salty.”

She reached out an appendage and brushed him lightly. Her strange fluid touch left him cooler and without his crust of sweat and tears. His headache receded by inches.

“Thank…mmmph.” Thor coughed as some of her trickled into his mouth. “Thank you, kind…uh.”

He sat up straighter and regarded his benefactress. Though he got the sense that this creature was feminine as much as Loki was masculine, rather something of an outward gloss that made a deeper mystery more explicable.

“You are very kind, dear…” Thor rasped. “I do beg your pardon, but what is your name?”

The woman-like column of water collapsed back into the river and then flirted up again. “Always with the confounding questions, barrel creatures are. You know my taste, surely and I know yours…”

She frothed to herself a moment. “Very…fermented, malty and salty both.”

Thor grimaced and buried his face in his folded arms and bent knees. For the first time he noticed his own sour reek like vinegar and burnt bread mixed, a vile drunken brew. The river spirit didn’t seem to be holding it against him though, she was smacking her watery lips. “So we know each other, what need of these ‘name’ things?”

“But…were I to speak of you later…to one who doesn’t know your taste?” Thor asked as he slowly puzzled out the rationale for a name. He gazed out dully at the vast plain around them. From above, the Ifingr river would be a long silver line tracked through a golden delta of swaying grass. “Why do you call me a barrel creature?”

She tilted her watery girth sideways in an eddying swirl. “Not fish, not otter, not frog…usually cast round in worked wood?”

Thor realized she meant boats or rafts. “Do you often speak with…barrel creatures like me? We call our kind _Aesir_.”

 “Some.” She grew suddenly coy and moved off to loosen a clot of flotsam caught up by a sunken log. She turned suddenly and rushed up to him on a wave. “Do you know any stories?”

Thor took an unsteady breath. “Uhm.”  

“Truly I don’t often speak to you barr-, ah, Aesir.” She sounded the word carefully in her melodious voice. “Always in such a hurry you are.”

Thor twitched a tiny shrug. “That does seem discourteous.”

“But, but, but! The last barrel creature who stopped and spoke to me told me some lovely stories. Not to say…” She rippled shyly. “I didn’t understand all of them.”

Thor nodded encouragingly. Here at least was one who wasn’t moved to cover him in pity.

“He looked like you. I mean…longish. Didn’t taste like you though.” She smacked her lips appraisingly. “Very distinctive taste. Stayed in me a lot longer than most of you Aesir-barrels can stand.”

Thor squeezed his eyes shut and pursed his lips. “A dark barrel?”

“Perhaps.” She seemed uncertain. “He also wanted me to have one of these ‘name’ things so he gave me one. I tried to help him too, but I don’t know if I did.”

“How did you help him?” It had been a sunny morning so, so, so long ago. Loki had sat here, blue-lipped and shivering, arguing with Thor. _I do have a reason, Odinson…but you shall not know it._

“Uhm.” The Ifingr spirit curved uncertain little waves toward the shore. “He said his ‘heart’ was on fire and he wanted to drown it. Make it cold again.”

She paused for a long moment. “You are all over in salt, yellow-Aesir-barrel. I think it must tickle your surface. You have gone quite red now.”

“I’m sorry.” Thor gasped.

“Why?” She trilled innocently.

“Where I come from….among the Aesir.” Thor tried to get a hold of himself. “It’s considered quite rude to get…liquid in front of someone who’s not an intimate friend.”

“Oh. How strange.” She collapsed into a deep pool and then churned up again. “But I know your taste. Tell me your ‘name’.”

“My name is Thor. Odinson.” Thor said gravely. “I am the god of thunder and king in Asgard.”

“So now we are friends!” The river spirit twirled happily. “You can be as wet as you like! Do you know any stories like the other barrel?”

Thor shook his head and then reconsidered.

“The only story I really know well concerns him directly.” Thor swallowed another sob. “It is the story of how we met and the adventures we had together.”

“Please.” She sparkled with myriad facets of sunlight on her gushing waterfall form. “I would like so very much to hear it.”

“Well, listen closely then.” Thor sniffed and huffed a long breath out. He’d never been much of a storyteller. But this was going to be all he had now, this saga, he should try to do it justice. “This story has never been told. This song has gone unsung.”

She curled herself into a happy little maelstrom, flipping splashes everywhere as she settled in to listen, her glassy eyes alight.

The sun was starting to slant when he finished, quite hoarse from speaking so long. The Ifingr spirit had interrupted him often with questions at the beginning of the tale, as she wasn’t familiar with much other than what touched her banks. But as the saga wore on, she grew silent.

“Hmmmmm.” She finally said when he had run out of words. “Hmmmmmm. No.”

Thor blinked at the sparkling water. “No?”

“No, the ending needs…work.” She shook her head, flinging droplets everywhere. “I mean, it was flowing along so well and then…killed by fire demons? No, it doesn’t suit.”

Thor wondered if he was mad or she was. “They had a sorcerer and…”

“Yes, yes, yes…I heard, it sounded very regrettable and unlucky.”  She frowned transparently. “You must change it, Thorodinsongodofthunderandkinginasgard.”

Thor shifted and straightened his bent legs, rubbing away the pins and needles. “Change it?”

“Yes.” Little waves lapped the shore; he realized that she was nodding. “It wants a new episode.”

“But he’s dead.” Thor thought about her earlier offer, he could just slip down, a few painful gasps and…

“I know not of this ‘dead’.” The Ifingr spirit spouted up a great flume. “But it sounds about as useful as a ‘name’.  You say he still lies in your golden ‘city’, he is with you surely?”

She quivered in a cascade of tiny ripples. Doubtless she was anticipating more stories from a resurrected Loki.

“I…forgive me, bright spirit, but surely…” Thor cleared his throat. “I know that you have been here just as long as the river and will remain as long as it flows, but the Aesir and the frost giants have souls and…we can be riven from our…barrels. And thereafter we are not to be re-united.”

“Who says so?” She asked pertly.

“Ah…it is the way of all things.” Thor started. “To do otherwise is impossible.”

 “Well, I understand that it may seem very difficult and very daunting to a small one such as you.” She said condescendingly as she rose up in a sudden geyser of water. “But impossible? Truly? Were you not just telling me a story of incredible deeds? As if it were true?”

“Yes, but that was…” Thor sipped a handful of her water out of his palm, feeling dizzy. “He’s much cleverer than I am. He…was.”

“Well, then you must ask others who are cleverer yet.” She explained kindly. “You bring me his barrel and I will keep him for you…I have a little magic under my surface, I can protect him. And then it wants only for you to find the rest of him and return here.”

Thor took a deep breath and stood up, ankle-deep in the frigid water. No one had ever pierced the veil, not that he had ever heard. But she made it sound…simple. He blinked and suddenly didn’t feel his headache.

It was said that the river flowed over the edge of Asgard and cascaded into Jötunheim. There were surely a few wise ones left in Jötunheim, and if they didn’t want to help him, he would **make** them.

Such a simple word. He murmured under his breath, ‘no’.

  _‘Til death do us part_ was weak stuff, for mortals. If it had been he who had fallen, in all likelihood Loki would now be halfway to discovering some scheme to reunite them. And so he was not as clever as Loki but surely he could…try. “I find you are right, kind river. It wants a new chapter, this story.”

Already it was a fire in his vitals. Loki wouldn’t stand for this, why should Thor Odinson, God of Thunder, King in Asgard?

“I will return soon, bright…” Thor brought himself up short. “You said he gave you a name.”

She had spread herself out to her banks again, but she quirked her head aloft. “Who?”

“Loki…the barrel with the strange taste?” Thor wondered how deep her memory flowed. “You said he gave you a name, what was it?”

“Ah…” She burbled to herself, cheerily sparkling in the sun. “It was perfect. S-s-s-sigyn.”

“That’s my ‘name’.” She chortled to herself. “Sigyn.”

****

“I am not mad.” Thor said as quietly and reasonably as he could.

“Thor-king, forgive me.” Heid said, strangely formal. “But you are surely aware that that is always the first thing that mad people say.”

Sif looked very grave. Frigga wouldn’t look at him at all; she only squeezed Odin’s limp hand while he slept.

“You will leave Asgard at war without her king?” Sif said quietly but the words, even in her soft voice, were fledged and steel-tipped. There was no argument to be made to that; it was exactly what he meant to do. No use protesting that he was hardly a king now, not with all his vital parts torn out.

He should have lied. It occurred to him suddenly that lying would have easily spared all these shocked and reproachful looks. Loki would have crafted some plausible but vague tale about needing the corpse to rest in state in Jötunheim and would have already vanished before objections could be mustered.

Already this mission was slipping away from him. Thor took a tight breath and hardened his resolve. “It will not be for long and…”

“No, it will certainly not take long, since it is impossible.”  Heid countered, and he clenched Mjölnir’s haft and pressed his lips against her cool head to keep from taking a swipe at the red-headed sorceress. He took ten deep breaths that seemed loud in the silence.

“I can still lift this hammer.” He said very slowly. “I have not lost all reason. I have done much for this realm and I never begrudged any of my duty. Is it too much that I might simply attempt to preserve one thing for myself?”

Sif bowed her shoulders inward as if she’d taken a body blow. 

“Thor, you cannot go.” Heid said, almost sounding disconsolate. “Sif says the fire demons are massing…”

Thor blinked at her. Speaking of fire demons now felt like warning a drowning man against a plague contagion. Heid was wrapping up her appeal, “…And they are all expecting you to receive their obeisance.”

“I am speaking of Loki’s life and you prattle at me of court protocol?” Thor tried to keep his voice measured but he wasn’t very successful. Heid did not quail but her tiny fists clenched and seemed to glow yellow for a moment.

“Thor, it is not only for this realm that I would ask you not to go thus.” Sif said quietly. “But for your own health also. You are grieving, we all are, and it leaves us prey to odd thoughts and fancies that will lead us nowhere but to more and greater grief.”

 _You mistake me greatly if you think I am asking your leave_. Thor took another breath to speak even as words fled him. But then Heid’s eyes were widening and Sif was straightening as they looked at him.

No, not at him. Behind him. Thor turned and almost flinched.

“My king, I crave a word with you.” Heimdall looked as composed as ever even as Thor boggled to see him absent the Bifrost. Of course, Heimdall’s sight went with him everywhere, but Thor had never seen the guardian away from the gate.

“Speak, Heimdall.” Thor’s heart sank as he anticipated another voice lifted in argument against him.

“You undertake to retrieve Loki’s spirit from the spirit world of the frost giants. You would go against nature, the way of all things with an arrogance that even the Allfather never dared.”

Thor paused wondering if he was being asked a question or simply harangued. “Yes?”

“Good.” Heimdall inclined his head once, turned on his heel and left.

Thor turned to see Heid and Sif exchange a wide-eyed look. He took two hesitant steps and then trotted after the guardian. Heimdall was leaving a horde of slack-jawed servants and sentries in his wake as he strode back to the Bifrost.

“Heimdall, what are you…?” Thor caught him up at the portcullis of the citadel. “I would know your meaning.”

Heimdall was silent for three long strides. Thor waited as patiently as he could. He was unsure if it was Heimdall’s blessing or curse that he could unravel himself from his deep, all-seeing awareness to speak power to a singular plane, a singular time… _it must be ever like explaining to children_ Loki’s voice purred in his ear.

“I told you once that Loki’s threads crossed my own. Thus my knowledge of his fate was hindered.” Heimdall began and Thor nodded. He remembered it well.

“There are those in Asgard who yet contend that Loki was a dark force among us.” Heimdall continued and spoke over Thor’s protest. “But since his spirit has been absent this realm, the future I have to foretell has grown very dark indeed.”

Thor gripped Mjölnir but it failed to be at all comforting.

“His passing was not as intended.” Heimdall said evenly and Thor’s mouth went dry. He had a sudden flash of that final battle, Loki’s pale, gasping face, the scarlet slash of his trembling mouth and…Thor quashed the memory ruthlessly to keep on his feet.

Heimdall slowly unsheathed his sword and took up his usual stationary stance on the dais of the Bifrost.

“It has left that which is to come greatly unsettled. I do not know if your proposed course of action will bear fruit.” Heimdall paused delicately. “But be the attempt worthy or not, you must undertake it, Thor-king. For the sake of the Nine.”

Thor’s blood went cold and sluggish as he tried to parse the command. It was not lost on him that Heimdall spoke of more than Asgard’s future. Dire foreboding made him shiver as the wind screeched around the rainbow bridge.

“The fire demons…” Thor began slowly.

“The fire demons may be far from the worst entity to trouble this realm.” Heimdall said.

 “So it is with your blessing that I leave Asgard unguarded.” Thor squared his shoulders and lifted his chin.

“My king, I must contradict you.” Heimdall said sonorously. “Asgard is not now, nor will be unguarded.”

Thor glanced over his shoulder to the Bifrost and was brought up short by the sight of Sif, Heid and Frigga ranged along it, looking at him with different iterations of concern. Sif still wore the breastplate that Loki had made for her; these days she seldom took it off even after it had grown scarred and seared. There was Heid, buoyant and resourceful as ever even in the face of this protracted war, her auburn hair massing up over her shoulders like the mane of a fierce creature.  And his calm, regal mother who had borne far worse hurts than this surely in the course of her long life and remained unbowed.

He turned to look back into the golden eye of the gatekeeper. “Forgive my rash words, Heimdall. You know my arrogance is legend. But I see that you are right.”

****

Thor had not been back to his own chambers since returning from the front line of the last skirmish. He had changed his battle-stained clothing in an anteroom of the baths and slept, insofar as he was able, on a low couch in his father’s smaller council chamber. Standing alone in the quiet space, it felt like the room had been bricked up, that it was dust-covered, stale-aired…when in reality it was no such thing.

Sif had helped him get his finest armor on. There had been a tacit agreement that they should not expose themselves to any more gossip than they had to and that meant no servants. Thor had expected to have to steel himself against the feel of one of Loki’s many gifts, one of his most prized possessions. But it was more comforting and less distressing than he had any right to expect.

“What are you fussing with?” He growled at Heid who was fidgeting with aught she had wrapped in a broad leather skin.

“That sword I gave you, the one that glows in the presence of warriors?” Heid prompted and Thor nodded.

“I re-forged it.” Heid held up two daggers that seemed to glow faintly with more than reflected torchlight. They blazed when she turned them toward Sif. “These will be easier to carry.”

He bent and sheathed them in his boots. Sif handed him something that looked like an ordinary hunting horn and Heid continued. “I have never created a spell such as this, so it may not work, or might work…unexpectedly. It is a pale copy of the Gjallarhorn; it _should_ resound in all realms.”

“Ah.” Thor said and took it from her. It was very small in his hand.

“I cannot even tell you to ‘have a care’, Thor-king.” He felt almost grateful as he regarded the pale figure of the Vanir witch. Now that he was unwaveringly committed; she was just as adamant. Heid, for all her cynicism, could have taught lessons in loyalty.  “You are heading far beyond the realms of _reason_ , much less _caution_.”

“But do have a care anyway, my king.” Sif chimed in with the ghost of a smile.

“If you could wait just a few more hours,” Heid wheedled. “With just a little more time for research, I could…”

“No.” Thor swallowed as his mother came into the room. “No, it must be now.”

Sif and Heid nodded slowly, recognizing his need.

“You must take this, my darling.” Frigga murmured as she fastened a new cape to his pauldrons. It was thicker than his usual garb, densely embroidered, yet soft. He could imagine that it might block even the iciest winds of Jötunheim.

“Thank you, Mother, I…” Thor tried to say more but his throat seemed to twist closed and he could not force even a whisper out.

“It has never seemed to avail much.” Frigga said with the faintest hint of a pained smile. “Urging caution upon you, my dear heart. But you must come back to me.”

****

Heid had helped him move the casket out to the nearest balcony. Under the moonlight, Loki’s deathly pallor was not so obvious and Thor found himself oddly soothed. He spared a glance up at the familiar stars and tried to slow his racing heart.

“What are you doing?” Thor watched Heid trace runes on the air and make a pass over Loki’s still face.

“Just a moment.” Heid had stuck her tongue between her teeth and she spoke out of the side of her mouth.  “I will send him to the Ifingr, if you can spare me one moment.”

“No, no more magic.” Thor shook his head, feeling suddenly superstitious. “There’s already been too much done.”

“Thor, it’s….” Heid squinted at him. “I can’t carry him and I very much doubt that you want to. If you are determined to leave him with this river spirit…”

“There’s an easier way.” Thor shot back tersely. He clicked his tongue, and whistled and quite soon the moons were blotted out by Jormungandr’s broad wings.

“Gently, girl.” It was dark, so he dared to lay his head against her smooth side and feel her great muscles move under her skin as she breathed. She flicked her tongue sadly at Loki and the windows rattled and the curtains twisted as she beat her great wings to grasp the carved sarcophagus in her enormous curved claws. Thor leapt up to his perch below where her neck met her shoulder and beckoned at Heid impatiently.

She folded her arms. “Oh, yes, I see, this seems much less prone to mishap than a little painless magic.”

“You need not come.” Thor clasped his hands over Jormungandr’s neck spines and started to click his tongue. Heid huffed angrily and then pushed her sleeves up so she could lift a hand to Thor. As they flew east, Thor took one glance back at Asgard, which had become just a sparkling array of flickering golden light in the vast darkness.

Sigyn bubbled and burbled enthusiastically at them in the faint light of dawn. “Hi, what a great lizard! I have seen the like, but never quite so fine! Come have a drink of me, scaly one!”

Jormungandr obligingly lowered her head to drink as Thor rearranged the linens covering Loki that had gotten somewhat disarrayed in flight. He could be so solicitous now, now when it didn’t matter…guarding against chill that Loki didn’t feel, would _never_ have felt, yet he couldn’t seem to stop himself fidgeting with the covers.

“Here.” Sigyn flittered up in a cascade of cool droplets. “Here is where I’m deepest, ThorgodofthunderkinginAsgard.”  

Thor nodded grimly and waded in until he was waist deep in the rushing water. Jormungandr had backed up on her haunches, looking uncertain, but she nudged the edge of Loki’s longship casket down the sandy bank adeptly. Thor caught the end and stared down at Loki’s still face for a long moment. _You will not rest while I cannot, magpie. I **will** find you.  _

Sigyn helped him, steadying the clinkered wooden planks while he pulled gently but inexorably down until the water swirled up over Loki, sending his hair eddying around his face.  Sigyn made the water unnaturally clear so he could see where she held the casket firmly wedged between her rocks and stones.

“When are you for Jötunheim?” Heid asked quietly.

Thor grunted. “At once.”

Sigyn assured him that her route to Jötunheim would get him to Utgard fasterthanfast.

He looked up at Jormungandr who had wrapped her tail around her long body anxiously. “Wait me here, girl and guard him. You can hunt this plain for a good while.”

She cocked her head and tightened her tail as if she were settling down for a nap. Her smoky breath slowed while her golden eyes stayed wide open.

Thor set a steadying hand on Mjölnir. He tightened the straps on his daggers, and drew Mistilsteinn four inches free to ensure that the scabbard was oiled.

“Any last words of advice?” Thor asked as he waded out for the second time.

Heid shivered. “Don’t assume everyone you meet loves you, Thor. And should you by some chance venture into the realm of the dead, don’t eat their food for **any** reason.”

Thor nodded and picked up his satchel. He tucked the horn and the cloak his mother had made in beside five of I _ð_ unn’s golden apples before heaving himself on the rickety raft that he’d woven together out of alder branches.

Heid scrambled back up onto the bank and gawked at him. “How did you ever get I _ð_ unn to give you so many apples?”

Thor balanced himself on his flimsy raft and pushed out into mid-stream.

“I just did what Loki would do.” He waved at Heid, wondering vaguely if he’d ever see her again. “I stole them.” 


	2. Rape

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Uhm, see chapter title. Might get a bit triggery up in here.

He lay down on his raft and folded his hands over his chest as if he were the one dead.  The sky was lightening, going from indigo to pink and it made him dig his fingernails into his breastplate as if he must hold his own heart together to keep it from breaking.

His father had spoken once of a verbal joust with a clever frost giant. At the time Thor had thought he was jesting, but later he’d come to realize that his father had been quite in earnest. But he couldn’t remember the Jötunn’s name, so he had never asked Loki to verify the story…Loki didn’t have any patience for people who couldn’t remember names.   

Hopefully, that one had survived the war with Asgard. Hopefully, he had survived all the years hence. Hopefully, he would speak to Thor. Thor blew his breath out. That was a lot of hoping, just for a start.

Loki would make a contingency plan at this point….actually, Loki would have already made several. But Thor couldn’t think beyond getting through the back door to Jötunheim.

There was a constant roaring, rushing, soughing, shushing noise filling the air.

Thor sat up just in time to look over the waterfall between the worlds.

*~*

“This is all your fault, you know.” Loki smirked at him in kind of a sour gloat.

“I know.” Thor said.

*~*

As cold as the void was, Jötunheim was colder. Just as Thor gulped a full breath of air, he was plunged into a corner of the frigid sea where the falls gushed into a constant bubbling morass of water, rock and ice. His raft broke up completely and he barely managed to cling onto the rest of his gear. 

Thor gasped when he re-surfaced; the water had to have been too salty to freeze completely, but he was already completely rimed with a thin coating of slimy, sticky ice. He threw his head back to seek an escape and discovered he was surrounded by cliffs and a cluster of frost giants brandishing spears. So much for coming through the back gate.

They shied back a bit when he jerked Mjölnir free of his belt and brandished her. “I am here to speak to Laufey-King. If you think to stay me, you will regret it sorely.”

 _Pause a moment,_ Loki’s voice came. _Is all as it seems?_

They had all tilted their chins down, gazing at him in astonishment. One of them still held a spiny creature that wriggled at the end of its spear. It wasn’t a spear, it was a gaff. Not warriors, but fishermen. Thor abruptly felt foolish and then hardened his resolve.

“The Asgardian.” One of the fishermen grunted. One of the largest of them (Loki had finally relieved him of the notion that frost giant size corresponded to age) twisted its harpoon in what could only be excitement.

“I am for Utgard.” Thor insisted, using Mjölnir to smash a few steps into the stone nearest him.

The frost giant who had spoken blinked at him very slowly. The expression was so familiar that Thor caught his breath.

“Surely.” The frost giant agreed. “Utgard is the place for you.”

****

“Laufey.” Thor cocked his head to one side. “You look weary.”

“What means this, Thor-king?” Laufey rumbled. “You follow on the heels of your message of my son’s passing: do you bring us his carcass that we may consign it to the ice? What makes you think that we would pollute our realm so with the faint blood of one of the Aesir’s thralls?”

 _Stroke softly_ Loki’s voice sounded in his head. _They already know you can strike hard._

“Those were more words than I’ve ever heard from you at once, old one.” Thor wandered over to one side of Laufey’s derelict throne room. “I think you care more than you claim to.”

Laufey bared his gritted teeth. Accusing a frost giant of unwonted sentiment was the equivalent of calling an Asgardian _ergi_. Part of Thor hoped that Laufey would take it most awry and he would have the excuse to beat answers out of the lot of them.

The receiving hall was crowded, Thor realized. The assembly stood as still as stone but as his eyes adjusted, he could see rank on rank of frost giants and it seemed their red eyes glittered with…he could not say. It could have been malice or apprehension.

He let the silence grow as he examined every one of them.

“Come to seek another bedmate?” Laufey jeered finally. “Steal my remaining heir?”

“Where is Helblindi, by the way?” Thor asked. He must have sounded archer than he meant to, because the frost giant nearest him grunted a discreet laugh.

Laufey snorted. “My last has the soul of a peasant. Doubtless he is wagering on dogfights or some other such nonsense.”

Thor nodded, distracted. At any moment, Laufey was going to ask him why he was here and he did not have an answer that would see him aided and not frustrated. Laufey would probably take pleasure in thwarting him just for spite. Thor was on the verge of bartering with the Casket of Ancient Winter when Laufey spoke again.

“But better by far that he should waste time in such pursuits.” Laufey continued. “Than die like a hound at the feet of the Aesir.”

“Your son died on his feet with a sword in his hand.” Thor tried not to show his own temper, but it was hard. “I have four divisions in my army and he alone stood the fifth. The enemy quaked in dread of his sorcery and he slew rank on rank of the demon horde to keep Asgard safe and through Asgard, _Jötunheim_. What the fire demons seek so recklessly, they will find here too.”

It was in the air, Loki had explained…and confusingly, it was in water too. There was something in the air that was growing scant in Muspelheim, drawing the demons out to wreak havoc.

“That my son was valiant is the very least I expect.” Laufey had sunk back into the shadow of his high throne. “My shame springs from his spending his talents so vainly to see you, you hot-blooded child, live to continue on in your folly.”

Thor took a deep breath of the frigid air. That was nothing more than just.

“Do you seek a companion in mourning?” Laufey bared his teeth again. “Seek elsewhere.”

****

The dooryard of Utgard was speckled dark with iridescent ice that had melted and frozen over and over again. Thor was no longer surprised by the sight of the enormous beasts they kept for riding distances considered too long to run, but he was still startled by how still the creatures remained when not in harness. They never stomped one of their great feet impatiently and rarely swayed their long necks. Sometimes they stayed so still that ice formed up around them in a frosty cocoon.

Trading insults with Laufey was not what he had come here for. Thor tugged on the edges of the cape his mother had made and cursed himself for a fool. He suddenly noticed a frost giant staring at him so acutely that it had to be either an insult or a desire for his attention. When he raised his head to return the gaze, the frost giant (he realized now that it was one of the fishermen, the youngest who was also the largest) started carefully backing up, maintaining eye contact until Thor was following him.

Thor knew better than to ask where they were going. Luckily, it was not too far…there was an arena just out of eyeshot of the ruined towers of Utgard. Thor recognized the place at once. Loki had killed almost a hundred frost giants here about a thousand years ago. Before he and Loki had been...

They were still using the arena for blood sport. Dogfighting, Laufey had said, but in Asgard these creatures would have been accounted something between wolves and lions. They had big blocky skulls and broad underslung jaws and they tore at each other with casual, unhurried savagery.

The fact that frost giants never called or cheered or seemed to react in any way to the slaughter they fomented was the part that always set Thor’s teeth on edge. It had always amused Loki who had persisted in describing Aesir reactions as vain, overblown peacockery. Thor had finally been willing to acknowledge that frost giant passion ran deep…so deep as to be nearly untouchable, he had grumbled at Loki whenever Loki grew particularly insouciant.

 _Touch harder_ Loki teased.

One of the huge beasts had just succumbed to the cascading twitches of its death throes and the victor of the bout was licking at the blood-soaked ice. One of the giants rumbled to another and the first one shrugged and threw what looked like a bundle of fur out next to the salivating wolf. Thor found himself scowling as the bundle flopped, scrabbled and tried to get purchase on the slick ice. It was lacking the thick curved claws of the other two because it was just a puppy. Thor could well imagine the quick snap of the broad jaws, a swift shake and then the tiny pup would be no more.

It wasn’t a fight, it wasn’t even mealtime. It was just a…snack to keep the larger animal calm between bouts.

Loki would have stopped him. Or joined him. But Loki wasn’t here.

He didn’t even realize he was moving until he was sliding down the last berm of ice and the reek of blood and blood-soaked fur caught him up short. The direwolf had just realized that larger prey was presenting itself and it turned on him, snarling, its huge claws clicking on the ice.

Thor set his feet carefully and didn’t flinch as the thing flung itself at him. He cast Mjölnir at the hinge of its jaw and that threw the beast sideways with enough force to shake the arena. The wolf howled and then broke off into a pained yelp as it tried to regain its feet. Its eyes now seemed to be looking in different directions and it didn’t appear to know ground from sky.

Thor scooped up the wolf puppy and trudged out of the arena. The pup wasn’t even weaned…it had the blunted muzzle of a creature that had been nursing at a teat all its life.

 “Trust the Asgardian to completely bugger the pool.” A deep voice from above his head made the palisades of the arena echo.

“It was too small to fight those others.” Thor said sullenly. The puppy cowered a little at the sound of the voices, giving a pained interrogative little yelp.

“That’s been said before.” A new voice sounded, one he recognized.

“Helblindi?” Thor looked up at his erstwhile brother-in-law.

“Thor.” Helblindi nodded acknowledgement at him and jerked his chin to make the other giants disperse. “Assume you didn’t come here for the sport.”

“No.” Without Loki there to scoff at the both of them, Thor found himself feeling almost relaxed in Helblindi’s presence. They had a number of things in common, after all.

“Why then?” Helblindi had the typical frost giant scorn for any type of faffing about.

Helblindi was also not clever enough to be worth lying to. “I wanted to leverage any vestigial guilt Laufey might have on Loki’s behalf to get his advice and help.”

Helblindi shook his head slowly. “Are you jesting now? What would ever lead you to think that Laufey-King spared anything when he heard of Loki’s death but a relieved sigh?”

Thor sighed himself. “How about you, is that what you felt? Relief?”

“No.” Helblindi flicked his gaze over to the other frost giants and something in his posture told Thor that Helblindi didn’t want anyone to hear him. “You can have my advice and help, for what it’s worth.”

That was unexpected.

“Why are you…?” Thor trailed off, unsure of how to speak his thoughts. If he hadn’t been convinced of frost giants’ near immunity to any finer feelings, he would have said that Helblindi was treating him almost…delicately. With gloves on, as it were.

The pity of the frost giants did not bear thinking about. Thor set his jaw.

Helblindi cast him what could only be called a wry look. Helblindi was not as clever as Loki by any reckoning, but Helblindi seemed to have no trouble divining his thoughts.

“Well.” Helblindi said heavily. “I am given to understand that it was you as killed my brother, Byleistr.”

He arched his great shoulders up in a shrug. “And then you seemed to make a habit of…how do you halfthings put it? _Fucking_ my brother Loki.”

Helblindi rubbed the back of his oversized skull, “So when you show up here looking for me…well you can see how that might leave me…a bit apprehensive.”

Thor blinked and snorted in surprise. While the idea of frost giant pity left him in raging confusion, frost giant _humor_ was like a black unicorn: rather unexpected.

Should he return in kind? What did frost giants find amusing?

“It’s true, I did…I knocked Byleistr’s head clean off his shoulders.” Thor said, bold as brass. “And I fucked Loki every moment he’d hold still for it. From you, I only want a small favor.”

It was working. One corner of Helblindi’s broad mouth had tightened. “Do tell.”

“Who is the wisest of all of you?”

“Vafthrudnir.” Helblindi said instantly and Thor mentally slapped his own forehead. Of course, that had been the name, his father’s debater.

Then Helblindi said something that caught Thor completely by surprise. “Loki’s ‘foster father’, is that the phrase?”

“Can I see him?” Thor asked eagerly.

“I guess?” Helblindi shrugged. “I could take you there. Whether he’ll see you is...”

He shrugged. Thor imagined that that was as good as it got. Frost giants were independent types; they did not speak for one another insofar as they could avoid it.  

“You are good to aid me, Helblindi.” Thor said sincerely.

“I don’t _want_ to help you.” Helblindi rumbled. “But my brother seemed to think that you might be the only creature in the Nine Realms as stubborn as he…was. So the quickest way to get you done and gone far from here is probably to help you.”

He turned back to the dooryard and Thor realized that he meant to ride. “You want that wolf to live?”

“Well, I don’t want it to _die_.” Thor looked down to where the pup still sat on his boot, its baby legs flopped wide. He bundled it up into his arms and followed his brother-in-law.

“Cut your finger, let it suck.” Helblindi advised. “They love the taste of Aesir blood.”

****

Vafthrudnir was immensely old, the scars on his face had deepened to canyons carved in flesh. His cave-like dwelling was almost comfortable and Thor cast his eyes around it eagerly. Loki had spent time here, been a child here, as hard as that was to imagine.

Helblindi had exchanged some low-voiced greetings with the aged one and then gone to sit in front of a small fountain that bubbled and burbled into a pool set deep into the center of the room. Thor realized that it was essentially the hearthstone for a people who did not favor warmth.

“I knew your…father, Odin One-eye.” Vafthrudnir handed Thor a tankard which, upon inspection, was filled with pure hot water. Thor was struck by the consideration and power of the gesture, doubtless the frost giants didn’t have much call for heated things.  “You are not much like him. Perhaps you favor your dam.”

“Some have said so.” Thor lied diplomatically.

“I remember…your father tasked me with the future, when he did not like to feel less erudite than a frost giant.” Vafthrudnir’s breath wheezed in a way that might have been a laugh.  “Of course the future comes, whether we know it or no. My strength lies in remembering.”

“You are said to be the wisest of your people.” Thor started. It was going to be difficult to work the conversation round to the part where he demanded aid in snatching Loki from the icy claws of death so he figured he’d begin with pleasantries.

“Oh, wise.” Vafthrudnir bowed his head. “I have a good imagination, I suppose. I can imagine things as different than what they are, which is difficult for our people.”

“But not for…Not for Loki Laufeyson.” Thor prompted, “Your foster son.”

“I know of whom you speak, Thor Odinson.” His voice was unexpectedly gentle. “As I had heard that he was lost to this time.”

They all fell silent. Thor suddenly noticed that the floor was gently fluorescing with shades of blue and green. His feet and hands had also grown very heavy and started tingling. He noticed that he’d drained most of his tankard…and apparently it only tasted of hot water. He was suddenly drunker than he’d ever been this side of Alfheim. And that had been less wine and more magic.

He wanted to protest, to rage at them or at himself. There was no time for this. But the spirit of…whatever it was carried him off to a soft-edged place where Vafthrudnir was asking Helblindi if Loki had ever taught him some icy version of hnefetafl.  

Helblindi snorted. “Loki thought I was thick as a stone.”

“No.” Thor contradicted. “No, he never said that.” The phrase Loki had usually hung on Helblindi was ‘useless’, so it was perhaps a bit of sophistry to have it otherwise. Praise and approval were sentimental Asgardian fripperies, as Thor knew well from all of Loki’s sneering disavowals. But Loki had come to crave so many of Asgard’s luxuries…perhaps Helblindi might not be immune. “He thought you were a true frost giant, Helblindi. Sometimes he envied you.”

Thor winced as he said it, even though it was true. If he did succeed in restoring Loki’s life and Loki ever came to find out what he’d just said to Helblindi, it would be Thor finding himself in need of resurrection.

Vafthrudnir’s gaze did not drop. Helblindi was concentrating on the rushing rill of the fountain. Thor wondered if they were as drunk as he was.

“What is a ‘true frost giant’?” Helblindi could not have sounded more bewildered.

Thor blinked stupidly at the bubbling water. That was a task too big for his wit, to explain the many painful insights Thor had learned while he was caught between two worlds in love and enmity. It was too big to explain everything, maybe he could hope to explain _one_ thing.

“Once.” Thor started awkwardly. “We were entertaining some Svartalfar. One of their chieftains had managed to tame their independence enough to be called ‘king’.  They sent an envoy and so that they could not say that our respect was anything less than flawless, we arranged a huge processional and banquet for them.”

Thor drew in a breath and exhaled. So long ago it was, and yet it was yesterday.

“At the last moment, Loki refused to go.” Thor chuckled. “Which was not unusual. He would often refuse things, just to thwart or anger me or for the pleasure of having me beg him. That was his way. So I should never take his presence for granted, I think.”

“But even as he was accustomed to refusing, I was accustomed to coaxing and cajoling him so as to best serve my own whim.” Thor flushed dark at the memory.

*~*

 “Spill in my mouth.” Thor begged. He stroked the back of Loki’s knee urgently.

“Patience, you fiend.” Loki gasped, grabbing a fistful of hair. “Let me enjoy myself for one moment.”

*~*

“This time he used his magic so we could both miss, without appearing to miss, the dull bits of the processional and reception. Again, that wasn’t so unusual…I should have stopped him, probably…selfish and unworthy of me to allow him to use his precious seið just to save me from minor inconvenience. But I didn’t…and it became significant because the envoy was not a king and retinue but a master assassin and his henchmen.”

Thor shrugged and took another gulp of the water-flavored spirit. “Needless to say, their attempt came to naught and all hailed the clever foresight of my consort and his puissance. But there were those who muttered that it was a bit too neat, that Loki must have put the plot in motion himself and changed his heart in the final moment.”

“I was loathe to think thus but one day, in the grip of one whisper too many, I tasked him with the thought.”

That had been awful. Thor remembered it with a sick queasiness; the worst had been Loki’s cool acceptance as if Thor’s anger and suspicion were not in the least unexpected.

Thor sighed. “And he asked me in return if it _mattered._ ”

“I hadn’t understood until that moment…Asgardians swear fealty and measure themselves by how well they keep their vow. Frost giants swear fealty, but they test the object of their allegiance every day, maybe every hour and minute.  They measure themselves by the strength of the one who commands their allegiance. I hadn’t known how deep the frost giants’ love of their independence truly ran.” Thor found himself examining the back of his hand as if it was unfamiliar. “He asked me whose loyalty was not the more valuable…fidelity from one who never thought upon their oath or one who always thought upon it and was free to decide otherwise at any moment?”

Helblindi was looking at him as if Thor was the wolf pup suddenly given tongue and Allspeech. “Surely Asgardians do not…give their allegiance to unworthy subjects and then just blindly follow.”

Thor shrugged. “Never intentionally. But we are largely unchanging…the Aesir, rather. It is perhaps our folly that we do not readily acknowledge that circumstances and people sometimes…change. It is our strength, but through Loki I also knew that it was a weakness.”

He leaned forward and caught Helblindi’s eye. “Will Laufey be pleased that you brought me here?”

Helblindi tilted his chin in a way that was growing very familiar to Thor…the way a frost giant averred that he did not know or care the answer to a question. Vafthrudnir chuckled.

“Did you ever find out if it was his plan to have you die at the hand of the Svartalfar?” Helblindi asked. 

“No. I doubt it though.” Thor said wryly. “After further consideration, it occurred to me that they could just as easily have been targeting him. The dwarves never had a great love of Loki.”

“But what kept…” Helblindi made an odd, unfinished gesture. “Thor, I don’t understand this Aesir…whinging. Why should the memory cause you hurt? And how does it make Loki less a frost giant than myself?”

Thor tried to speak through his thickened throat and was very grateful when Vafthrudnir answered. “Because it is hard to regard oneself as a worthy object when another has paid for your life with their own.”

“But you are king.” Helblindi stirred uneasily. “Surely that’s only your due.”

“Yes.” Thor agreed dully. “You would think that would make it easier.”

****

Helblindi succumbed to the potency of the jötunn brew within the hour and slept where he sprawled on the floor.

“Was it you then who taught Loki sorcery?” Thor asked Vafthrudnir, sensing an opening.

“I taught him to see the patterns in all things.” The old giant snorted gently. “Even as I realized that I was only better arming him to set them all awry.”

Thor was trying to compose a more pointed inquiry when Vafthrudnir said quietly, but firmly. “I will not aid you in your quest, Thor Odinson.”

Thor looked up at him, dismayed.

“Do not think that there is lever you could place that would move me.” Vafthrudnir rumbled. “I armored my ward as well as could be, given that the odds were stacked against him well as high as fate would allow. One thing I could never impart to him was any measure of peace and tranquility and now that he has found that, I will not be the one to rend him from it.”

“Are you so confident that-?” Thor started, desperately.

“Unnatural.” Vafthrudnir was suddenly as hard and blue as glacier ice. “And dangerous. And pointless. Were I to cast the runes on the floor and bring him back to you now, he would not know you and how would you bear that heartbreak?”

 _Somehow_ , Thor wanted to beg and plead, but he had no words. Vafthrudnir made it sound so tooth-grittingly simple and Thor grasped for some means, some leverage that would move a decided frost giant, knowing that it was hopeless even as his racing thoughts made his head ache.

“Comfort yourself that you knew him best, Odinson.” Vafthrudnir said gently. “How strange that it should be so.”

Thor shook his head. “Loki was the only one who knew Loki. But I was the most…interested…in knowing him.”

They stood silently for a while, watching Helblindi sleep with the direwolf pup curled under his armpit. Thor was both wretched and comforted to be in the presence of the only two beings in all the nine realms who genuinely mourned the passing of one Loki Laufeyson.

****

Stepping outside Vafthrudnir’s lodging, Thor noticed that the sky had shaded marginally lighter than its usual deep twilight. What passed for dawn on Jötunheim turned the crags from gray to silver.

 Thor felt an odd tingling up the hollow of his spine and he realized that it was his body’s repressed inclination to shiver. The ring he wore, the one Loki had crafted for him so painstakingly, left him almost immune to the deep chill but he had the occasional vestigial response. While it had been comforting to speak with Vafthrudnir, it had been decidedly less than helpful.

Consulting the wisest was a fool’s errand, he thought wryly. Wisdom was usually aligned with caution. One became wise by successfully surviving the harsh days and learned to shun mad fancies such as his.

He thought for the ten thousandth time that this would be so much simpler if he had Loki by his side to advise him. Thor stood as the wind scoured a silver-white stinging coat of thin snow over his face and pondered while Helblindi swung up into the saddle of his beast.

“Are there any here, Helblindi,” Thor asked carefully. “Who you don’t speak of?”

“What is your meaning?” Helblindi slid a little further up the haunches of his bipedal mount.

“Are there any here whose reputation is so fell and terrible that no one ever speaks their name aloud?” Thor probed. “Do you have any such in Jötunheim?”

Helblindi’s face smoothed out. Thor had previously noted that they did that. Where an Asgardian would knit their brow, the jötnar became smoother and blanker as they grew more troubled.

“There are…a couple.” Helblindi said grudgingly after a long wait. “Out in the Jokul wastes. Sorcerers.”

“Will you guide me there?” Thor didn’t bother asking if visitors found a welcome.

Helblindi stood up in the stirrups and examined the bleak horizon. “I will take you most of the way…But I will not wait you, you understand?”

“Perfectly.” Thor said grimly and mounted up. The wolf puppy yipped happily and bounded ahead.

****

The canyons at the edge of the Jokul wastes were a dense network of dark and narrow rifts cut through ice and stone. Loki had told him once that they concealed much of Jötunheim’s animal life. But as fascinating as Thor might have found a hunting or tracking foray, Loki had deemed the area best avoided simply because the nature of that animal life was so consistently vicious.

The canyon that Helblindi had sent him down was just about as wide as a frost giant could comfortably walk. The ice had formed in sinuous, organic whorls and it almost felt like he was tramping through the bowels of some prodigious beast. The rift above put him in mind of a great river stretching over his head, the pinpricks of stars like sparkling ripples.  Thor kept turning his face up to glance at the sky because otherwise it felt as if he was being digested in the belly of Jötunheim.

Helblindi had told him that he’d know when he found the place. The wolf puppy trotted along behind him silently, like it didn’t even dare to bark. Vafthrudnir had fed it something and Thor fancied it was already bigger than when he’d rescued it.

There was a shadow ahead, the narrow rift drew to an end at a hollow in the rock and then traveled on in opposite directions. But at the point it forked there was a fuller darkness, a cave of unknown depth. The high mouth was fanged with huge icicles, spiking down in a deadly array. Thor paused his stride for a moment and realized what he’d taken for an outcrop of stone was in fact a large frost giant, dwarfed by the cleft of his great cavern. They stood and regarded one another in the faint starlight.

 “Who is it?” A sonorous voice bounced around the canyon walls. For a moment, it almost seemed like the ice itself was asking the giant who called.

The tall giant tilted his chin back to shout. “It’s the Laufeyson’s pretty wee wife.”

Thor almost laughed. Weak stuff, if they thought to prick him. The words did sting a little, but not in the way the giant probably intended.

He shivered but said nothing as another giant emerged to take his measure.  

They both stood half his height again. One of the two had no ritual scarification on his body which seemed all the more naked for the broad expanses of smooth azure skin. His face and neck were deeply etched, however, not just with lines and chevrons but runic script as well. There were two glyphs cut into either cheek and Thor was surprised to realize that he recognized the symbols. One was the rune for ‘life’ or ‘motive force’ or ‘rage’ depending on the context. The other was ‘the future’.

The other giant’s face was untouched but his body was a dark cobalt blue with line upon line as if an entire jötunn book scrolled over his generous flesh. Each of his pectoral muscles had a singular rune burned proudly above the nipple: ‘iron’ and ‘blade’. 

The light seemed brighter. Thor realized it was because the starlight caught on the sharp planes of their white teeth and they were both grinning at him in what looked like ferocious delight. The pup yipped in alarm as the one with the scarred face split his clenched fist open and loosed a glowing green light into the canyon. If Thor had any doubt that they were sorcerers, it was quickly dispelled.

“You want something, do you not, storm-bringer?” The bare-faced one spoke first.

Thor got the sense that dissembling with these two would be both pointless and dangerous. “I wish to ransom Loki Laufeyson’s soul from death, can you aid me?”

The ground shook as they gave voice to their laughter, the one reached into his loincloth and they seemed to exchange some talismans. Thor realized they must have placed a wager on his dread entreaty and his blood ran colder.

“It would be our great _pleasure_ , Thor-Aesir-King, to do your bidding.” The scar-faced one chortled. “Please, I bid you welcome within.”

Thor cast one last look up at the stars and settled his grip on Mjölnir’s haft. “I would fain have a name to lay to you before I availed myself of your hearth and salt.”

That was as fair as he could speak to such dire persons. Their eyes glowed all the brighter in the eerie witchlight.

“We will spare you the litany of our kennings because we can see that you labor in haste Aesir-King,” rumbled the scar-faced one. “I am Angrboda.”

The bare-faced one grinned back to the tips of its eyeteeth. “And I am Jarnsaxa.”

****

“It is possible?” Thor asked eagerly.

“Of a certainty.” Once inside, Angrboda moved to conjure another fire: blue flame from a stone brazier…obviously for light, not warmth. The shadows of the large cavern stayed deep and kept their secrets. Thor could vaguely see some hooks lining the walls, silhouettes that twisted in the flickering blue light.

“We journey often to the Up-world.” Jarnsaxa had crouched to draw some esoteric symbols on the ground. After sketching a dozen, he brushed his hands clean and rose. “Why do you think we wear our naming thus?” He indicated the runes on his chest. “Lest we forget.”

“We would ever prefer to deal in life than death, Aesir-King.” Angrboda had picked up a bowl and was sniffing it. He indicated that Thor should sit. Thor tucked his cloak back carefully and set his gear on the floor. The direwolf pup came to flop upon his satchel and the giants seemed to grin or grimace at the gangly beast.

“The cost to retrieve a soul is high, but that should afford you no great worry should it, mighty king?” Angrboda started in a wheedling tone.

Thor nodded slowly. “Tell me and it will be yours.”

They exchanged a glance and then gazed at him greedily.

“We should spell out our terms.” The one named Angrboda started businesslike. “We will venture to the Upworld on your behalf and retrieve the soul of the second Laufeyson, one Loki, that one who allied himself to the Aesir-king, Thor. As you have not brought his body, we will encase his spirit in a vessel of your choice.”

“We take no responsibility for the state of the soul we bring back.” Jarnsaxa folded his inscribed arms and Angrboda nodded fiercely. “Nor how it responds to be being reunited with flesh.”

Thor nodded once in acknowledgement.

“Payment shall be in advance.” Angrboda said casually, even as his eyes glowed red as coals.

Thor squared his shoulders and leaned back. “What is the levy then?”  

At that, they grew coy and quiet for a moment.

“Asgardians are known to be profligate.” Jarnsaxa grinned at the wolf pup which whimpered softly. “Your father gave an eye and that was only for the barest scrap of wisdom.”

“Which eye will you have then?” Thor pushed his hair off his face.

“What need have we for your eyes, Aesir-King?” Jarnsaxa shifted his weight until he sat next to Thor. Thor could feel the deep chill that radiated off his flesh.  “Far better that we should have a hand off you, hmmm?”

“Which one?” Thor cupped his fingers over the ring he wore, too late to hide it now.

“Or your tongue perhaps…he would say that it was too dear, I think.” Angrboda addressed Jarnsaxa. “But who knew that the Laufeyson would ever be set to command such a price?”

They both laughed and Thor gritted his teeth and clenched his fists as he still had them. The giants went silent, though they still smiled. Jarnsaxa was sprawled nonchalantly half off the bench in such a way that he had to look up at Thor. They both seemed to be trying to make themselves small.

“What will you have then?” Thor felt that his nerves were being pricked by thousand upon thousand needles.

“You are not well-placed to bargain, as we can see that your heart is a drum that the Laufeyson beats…surely, you would not dicker for his spirit?” Angrboda almost cooed. He was very close now, kneeling between Thor and the fire.

“I would not bargain with you.” Thor tried to speak with measured calm and not shout. “Yet you have yet to make an offer that is not mist and snow.”

Angrboda reached out slowly and hooked one great finger underneath the leather of Thor’s vambrace. Thor looked down at the insinuating digit and thought stupidly _you want my armor?_

“You know how difficult it is to wring life from this realm?” Angrboda murmured “That is all we would have of you. You have life in copious abundance, surely enough to share without undue harm.”

In a moment, they were _very_ close. They moved far too quickly for their size or they did not move at all. There was something sinuous and feminine in the way Angrboda tilted his chin to better look up at Thor. Thor jerked involuntarily as Jarnsaxa reached to stroke his hair. Angrboda had shifted his hand to coil loose around Thor’s ankle.

It was obscene. To have their hands on him like he was some…he couldn’t even complete the thought as Jarnsaxa ran a light finger over the ridge of chainmail that shielded his collarbone.

Thor kept his gaze steady on the blue fire as he reached for the lace at his throat that would see the mail and leather peeled off him. Jarnsaxa chuckled low as Angrboda leaned in with a grin that was pure avarice.  

“One last thing, brave one.” Jarnsaxa whispered chill in his ear. “We have no dealings in choice-theft or any subversions of the will. I will not ask you not to raise a hand against us, but you must be willing for every part of this to give the…offering some _heft_.”

“My resolve will not waver.” Thor undid his first buckle. “I will not stay you.”

 _Chain me to your fucking tentpole, whoremongers. You can have me both at once for all I care._ Thor thought savagely. _Loki, Loki, Loki_.

*~*

“This is all your fault, you know.” Loki didn’t smirk for once. If Thor didn’t know better, he would have said Loki looked rather sad.

“I know.” Thor gasped. He couldn’t breathe for some reason.

Loki reached up and ran careful fingers through his hair. “Then of course…it was I who failed to look to my own flank. Most unlike me. Perhaps it’s **my** fault.”

“Loki…” Thor tried to keep from sniffling.

“Oh, that stings you? Does it?” Now Loki smirked. “Then again, what business has Odin, leaving his rest to such a frantic hour? Most unfair to leave you king and war chief both…maybe the blame rests solely with him, hmmm?”

Thor pressed his lips together to stifle a moan.

“If Tyr had timed his rearguard action a little more fortuitously, that would have probably have seen us right….” Loki nodded sagely. “Of a certainty, it’s Tyr’s fault.”

Thor stayed silent, his jaws locked together.

“Sif…was Sif not tasked with gauging their strength? Surely she should have known that they had magic enough to rend my soul from me? And just then her competence fails her?” Loki shook his head. “Her fault, for sure.”

Thor sobbed and then clenched his teeth as if he could swallow the sound.

“Apparently, association with the Aesir has turned me arrogant indeed.” Loki turned his gaze up, musing. “My way has ever been cautious in the face of an unmeasured foe. I’ve been waiting my entire life for a knife in my back, what madness could have made my attention falter? Truly, it’s my own fault.”

“But in the end something… _someone_ has done this to me, infected me with this plague.” Loki was close now; Thor could feel Loki’s breath on his lips. “My best beloved goes heedless off into the thick of battle in the fullest confidence that I have his train, come what may. And he has it right. Because he has turned me into a lovesick fool with nary a thought for my own hide. No, it’s definitely _your fault.”_

*~*

“Ah.” Thor was finally forced to inhale and he couldn’t help the small sound. Jarnsaxa looked down at him, but did not jeer. The breath, while essential, set his innards agonizingly alight and Thor fought a huge battle to make himself motionless again.

“You were far away right then. Perhaps that’s best.” Angrboda whispered into his ear. “No need for you to suffer unduly.”

His bones were being rolled between rocks. His skin was being flayed away by their icy breath. He felt like one wing of his pelvis was being slowly unhinged from the other. Surely there was a limit as to how far sinews could be stretched before they snapped.

Jarnsaxa moved again and Thor realized that the faint high-pitched noise ringing in his ears was not the keening of the wind. He exhaled very carefully. Jarnsaxa was so close to his face, the hard red of his eyes was avid and hungry. Thor stifled a moan as a broad finger swiped over his glistening cheek and running nose.

“Still so soggy.”Jarnsaxa smacked his lips on Thor’s salt. “I can never remember which of your effluvia are significant.”

“His little joke.” Angrboda murmured soothingly.

“The red stuff, that’s valuable, right?” Jarnsaxa mocked, glancing down. He made a sudden move and agony blotted out Thor’s every sense. Angrboda clicked his teeth in annoyance. “Gently, you oaf. You’ll leave him a shell. Or quite mad.”

Jarnsaxa seemed to decide that he didn’t really want to split Thor in two so he began again more carefully. The pressure seemed to push the spongy part of Thor’s lungs up into his throat.

He had dared one glance down, but could not risk another. Nausea had almost erased him. Was that _his_ flesh then, swollen and purple and pulsing like a huge tick?

“Oh, I know that must be painful.” Angrboda spoke confidingly into his ear. “I will try to distract you…I must say you have discipline that moves mountains, mighty Thor. When we entertained your handsome husband, the first of many things we had to do was stop his mouth.”

“Wasn’t easy.” Jarnsaxa grinned meanly.

“We used a _skepnir_ …do you have such in Asgard?” Angrboda lifted an eyeless, snaky thing out of a basket. “Rather like an eel…once in the mouth it tries to mate with the tongue. Unsuccessfully of course, but it does get rather unpleasantly…thick. ”

It hurt just to move his eyes but Thor couldn’t help looking up at Angrboda who smiled at him even as he dripped poison.

“Oh, yes, indeed…did you not know we were long acquainted? How think you came Loki by the black-haired lass, his prized witch-queen?” Angrboda absently twined a finger through a lock of Thor’s hair. “’Twas my doing entirely.”

Jarnsaxa cleared his throat, Thor caught his breath on a dry heave of nauseous anguish and Angrboda continued hastily. “With a bit of help from m’learned friend, certainly, could not say fair otherwise.”

“Lucky thing, that ring of yours.” Jarnsaxa mused to himself. “Otherwise I think you’d have shattered in pieces by now.”

“Loki’s magic was always elegant.” Angrboda almost sounded envious.

Thor tried to speak. It came out an almost-unintelligible grunt.

“Shh, storm-bringer, it will soon be over.” Angrboda traced surprisingly delicate fingers over Thor’s eyebrows.

“No.” Jarnsaxa tightened his grip from bruising to crushing. “It won’t.”

****

It was the whispered, hissing argument that finally woke him. He had lost his wits entirely when Angrboda had flipped him on his belly and twisted his hair until his spine arched like a bow. Slowly, his self-awareness had returned as the pain had sharpened from a rhythmic throbbing ache to brutal little blades in his viscera.

He’d dreamed in the hazy, soft-edged pool of pain, dreamed that the floor began to glow between the runes and the giants huddled there like two great boulders on either side of a rippling, roiling pool. In his dream, Angrboda had chanted nonsense, calling upon those he named the ‘lightless ones’ then odd fragments of words like, “Hope of water seeks the biter.” Thor lost himself in the space between his anguish and hope.

After some endless while, Thor blinked awake more fully. He curled his ring finger and agony lanced up his arm but it cheered him. He was only stretched, not snapped apart.

The chanting had stopped. The ring of liquid light had vanished. The two frost giants huddled in a fervent conference, a sustained low uncertain rumble. Thor felt a sudden warm wetness and he steeled himself to look down. But it was only the wolf puppy lapping at his fingers, its stone-gray fur flecked with blood.

“Have you…” Thor cleared his throat and grated. “Where is Loki?”

They stopped and straightened. They did not look at him.

“He is not there.”Jarnsaxa said slowly.

  
“What?” Thor felt like he was a minuscule homunculus in a great beast of a body…a hermit living alone in an abandoned city. He felt that his voice was smaller than it had been when he was a child.

“We have touched every soul late come to the Upworld.” Jarnsaxa growled even as Angrboda fidgeted nervously. “And he. Is not. There.”

“How…?” Thor tried to push himself upright but he couldn’t even gain his knees. Trying to tighten the muscles in his stomach and back made him feel ghastly: squishy and too fluid on the inside. He expected the return of their mocking smiles but they both looked too strained and preoccupied to taunt him. It occurred to him faintly that they were not just baffled but deeply troubled.

But another searing emotion was stealing up alongside his confusion and disquiet. Something far more hot and familiar.

Thor raised a shaking hand and Mjölnir leapt across the space to him. Her strength leeched into his veins, if slowly and he could just manage to stand.

Jarnsaxa snarled and pressed his hand flat against the dim circle of runes and as Thor took two shuddering steps across the floor, the circle went liquid again in a swirling maelstrom of blue light that rapidly swirled up into a column of churning magic. Thor mustered all his strength to fling his hammer but the ground broke away under his feet. The last thing he remembered was the wolf howling disconsolately as he fell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Best betas ever: lousy_science and TheSecretary


	3. Murder

When he hit the ground, it cracked.

*~*

“Care for a drink?” Loki tucked the chalice carefully into his left hand.

“Oh.” Thor drained it with a gasp.  Gratitude (and the burn of liquor) nearly made tears spring to his eyes. “You do love me.”

Loki laughed gently and topped up his glass again.

“You laugh, but…” Thor jerked his chin at one of the passing healers. “They will ever be working wondrous magic, putting us all back together like puzzle-games and yet somehow entirely forgetting that a battle is thirsty work.”

“Mmmm.” Loki acknowledged. “Let me see.”

Thor drew his hand back shyly. “It’s nothing.”

“If it were nothing, what would be keeping you from the hall above?” Loki asked with his usual razor-sharp reasoning. “Now show me.”

Thor peeled back an edge of the bandage. The flesh was seaming already, but it was quite evident that the hand had been nearly cleaved in two between the ring and middle finger almost all the way back to his wrist. Thor would never acknowledge it, but it ached fiercely.

Loki’s face never lost its bland amiability but his eyes seemed to set like a fox that has just caught sight of a wounded bird.  “He must have been quick indeed. Is he already slain?”

Thor sighed. Loki probably thought that the lightness of his tone gave nothing away. “Surely he must be. I was laying about me like a windmill there at the end.”

“So.” Loki pursed his lips, plucking at the bandage gently. “You’re not sure. Think I’ll go along tomorrow.”

“Have done, magpie.” Thor growled. “It was a fierce battle. Things happen.”

“Yes.” Loki bobbed his head, still trying to look like the picture of nonchalance. “They do, don’t they? But I am also a thing that happens.”

“You may come if you will fight.  With ice or sword, I care not.” Thor raised an admonishing hand, winced and then raised the other. “But I won’t have a repeat of that time in Nornheim, with the mist and smoke and everyone’s bowels in knots.”

Loki folded his arms and glared mulishly. In Nornheim, some ferocious troll had landed a freak backhanded blow that had left Thor’s breastbone cracked in two and Loki had not taken it well. “At least let me…”

“No.” Thor cupped his hand protectively. “They may be slower, but the stones don’t leave me feeling so odd and beside myself. Save your magic for those as need it.”

“They are unworthy.” Loki snarled and pushed the curtain back an inch to gaze out at the room full of healing warriors.  Thor was sometimes grateful that Loki kept himself garbed in his Aesir form while in Asgard since his jötunn face was almost impossible to read. Now Loki was scowling around at the room with a black expression that made most of Thor’s army drop their eyes in shame. Only Sif and Tyr held his gaze, unmoved. “What were they doing while you…”

“Loki.” Thor caught Loki’s wrist with his good hand and pulled him back to the bench to stand between Thor’s knees. “It was a battle. Things happen. It’s no one’s fault.” He leaned in to take a breath of Loki’s cool, clean scent. It was a testament to Loki’s disquiet that he didn’t immediately shove Thor and complain of the stink. Emboldened, Thor stroked Loki’s hair with his good hand. “What are you going to do, wily one? Go about and demand that no one dare lay a finger on the thunder god? Insist that water not wet me and bees not sting? You’ll be all day oath-taking and I would have you otherwise employed.”

“Oh truly?” But Loki deigned to stroke Thor’s matted, muddy locks off his face. “You deny me my sorcery for warcraft and healing, how am I to…”

“I have other hurts, you know.” Thor nibbled his lip winsomely and looked up through his eyelashes.

Loki stiffened and narrowed his eyes. “Where?”

Thor peeled his tunic down awkwardly with his good hand, revealing a darkening bruise spreading over his shoulder. Loki pursed his lips again and ran a ticklish finger over his collarbone before leaning in to kiss it.

“Mmmm.” Thor tilted his chin up and pointed at the abrasion over his eyebrow. Loki frowned mockingly, but didn’t hesitate to press his lips there as well.

“I’m suffering a lot…from this…” Thor caught Loki’s hand and drew it down his belly to the join of his legs. “Heat and swelling. It’s most uncomfortable.”

Loki was biting his lip in earnest now, trying not to laugh. “I think I can aid you, my liege.”

*~*

He blinked up at the black sky. Light fingers of rain patted him gently. He closed his eyes again. 

****

Fur. Fur grew heavy when soaked with water and it stank. Thor blinked and the rain beading in his eyelashes trickled into his eyes. He squinted and grimaced. The direwolf pup sprawled across him; its blocky head slumped over his neck. Its fur tickled Thor’s nose and he sneezed mightily. The wolf leaped to its feet with a yelp and then gave him a reproachful look.

Thor glowered back at him, feeling woozy and as fluid as a puddle. The wolf shook itself sending a shower of water every which way. Thor blinked and drew his head back under the edge of the heavy cover that shielded him from the worst of the damp and chill. He blinked again and fingered the edge of the sodden pelt spread over him.

Sheepskin from the smell. Several sheepskin clumsily stitched together, wet and heavy but still warm.

“Are you awake?” A clear voice seemed to come from on high. Thor squinted up at the silhouette of a face peering down at him.

“I was asleep?” Thor swallowed the bitter taste in his mouth. It tasted like congealed bile and blood.

“For a while I thought you were dead.” The blurry face resolved into a forehead, wide-set blue eyes and bedraggled wisps of dark hair. “But then you didn’t start rotting so…”

“How…” Thor sat up and winced. “…long?”

“Handful of days.” The voice sounded a little fainter now.  Whoever-it-was had retreated from the edge of the crater that surrounded Thor. A hand-span of mucky water filled the bottom and Thor grimaced at his pale, swollen fingers, flexing and clenching them to get the feeling back. The rain softened on his scalp.

He stood up and his benefactor recoiled in surprise. His wide-set eyes seemed to go even wider and astonishment made him look even younger than he was. The lad was barely past coltish youth, broad-shouldered but slim with only hints of a beard.

The young man quickly looked down and sideways as if looking at Thor directly was difficult. Considering the crimson stains fringing the bottom of the crater, Thor could well imagine that he looked rather frightful.

“Where am I?” Thor asked dully. He looked down the steep rise of the downs to where a chalky cliff carved a deep crescent into the sea. The mist was lightening but the whole world was painted shades of green and gray shading from slate to almost white.

The lad shrugged. “Nowhere.” He jerked his chin back up the hillside. “About a day’s ride from Breidablik. That’s our town. Well…it’s more of a village, really.”

“What realm?” Thor scrambled out of the crater.

The youth seemed inured to Thor’s bulk now but the question obviously unnerved him, he appeared to start and then discard at least two replies. “Vanaheim.”

Thor nodded. “For five days, you said?”

“Well…” the lad fingered the hem of his rough-spun jacket. “That’s when I found you. But I haven’t been out and about like usual.”

He frowned and gestured down the hill where a few sheep huddled in the dubious shelter of a stunted tree. “Been a bad storm all week.”

Thor tilted his face up to the leaden sky. “It will stop soon.”

The lad opened his mouth, then shut it and nodded.

“Thank you for…” Thor gestured at the sheepskin coverlet.

The lad shrugged and his full lips twisted wryly. “I had ‘em to spare.”

He cast one wary look awry at the direwolf pup who had been jauntily scratching its ear and gnawing at its behind. Thor blinked. The creature was now easily thrice the size it had been and Thor realized that the wolf pup must have been making rather free with a helpless flock of sheep. He had a brief thought for Jormundgandr and swallowed.

“I can well imagine that my, uhm.” Thor took a breath. “Companion has made rather a dent in your flock, good shepherd. Please accept my deep regrets and be assured that I will certainly make good the worth of the beasts you have lost.”

The youth gawked at him, slack-jawed. Thor reflected that it was rather a lot of words for a simple offer. “I am grateful for your aid.”

The lad recovered himself and shrugged as if there hadn’t been another option. “He’s a rum one, your…companion? Looks like a dragon in dog’s clothing but just as friendly as you please, once he knew that I had no thought to hurt you. Wouldn’t leave you for ten minutes running though.”

Thor felt a stab of painful affection for the direwolf’s loyalty. He reached out to rub his knuckles over the creature’s blocky skull and it whined at him appreciatively.

“I have some of your things.” The lad confessed, scuffing his boot through the muck. “I would have brought you back to my…place, but there was no shifting you.” He looked up at Thor and smiled nervously. “And that hammer’s heavier than it looks.”

Thor’s heart quickened, maybe his current state was not so dire. “My armor? My satchel?”

“Come and see.” The lad jerked his chin up the hill. “Can you walk a bit?”

Thor stretched out a fierce twinge in his spine. “I can try.” 

He whistled at the direwolf who was looking longingly at the trembling sheep. Mjölnir droned with a sharp whine of anxiety while he stroked fingers across her haft.  He trudged after the boy as the rain stopped and the mist lightened. He stopped at the top of the hill and looked back down to the palisade of the chalk cliffs and dark sapphire sea.

“It’s home.” The lad shrugged, managing to appear both sheepish and defiant.

Thor nodded. “I think I’ve been here before.”

The lad looked at him skeptically and shook his head with a wry grin. “Pretty sure I’d remember you.”

Thor sighed. “It was a long time ago.”

The young man’s hut was sturdy and homely, set in the hollow of a ridge in a stand of rowan and ash trees. Thor felt a sudden unwarranted affection for the place; he could not have felt more honored if the youth had brought him to a gilded, ornately-carved long hall. The windows had red curtains and boxes of flowers and the hearth was made of smooth stones fished up from the beach.

“Welcome, stranger.” The youth banged open his door with a small flourish. “It would honor me if you do your healing here.”

Thor cut his eyes over and nodded gravely. The young man had very discreetly declined to notice when Thor had paused to swipe off the blood that trickled down his thigh twice on their walk. He moved easier at every step, but most of that was Mjölnir’s magic and the rest of it was sheer force of will.

The youth beckoned him down to a conveniently-placed bench and brought him a basin of clear, cold water to wash and a tumbler to drink.

Then he asked the one question Thor had a clear answer for:  “Are you hungry?”

****

Thor ate a dozen loaves of bread and the three haunches of mutton that the lad had managed to rescue from the wolf’s depredations and he was just finishing off a cask of ale when the youth’s horror-stricken expression penetrated his feeding frenzy.

“Oh.” Thor nearly spat out his current mouthful, suddenly on fire with mortification. This was surely the boy’s rations for a week that he’d just carelessly consumed in less than an hour. As stern as his ordeal had been, his parents would have been aghast at his unmannerly abuse of guest-right. “My dear shepherd, a thousand apologies!”

The lad blinked, shook his head and said weakly, “Oh, it’s nothing. Perhaps you could tell me some stories later, I imagine you’ve seen a lot of…”

In this simpler world, stories were currency almost as good as gold. Thor twisted his lip wryly at the lad’s courtesy in the face of his chagrin.

“I can do better than that.” Thor insisted. “Forgive me; you said you had rescued some of my belongings?”

The lad cocked his head at the sudden, rather vulgar non sequitur, but he just disappeared into the tiny house and returned bearing a folded heap of Thor’s dragonskin armor and his small satchel. Thor opened his bag and ran a quick hand over his miraculously unbroken horn and daggers, and then he fished out two apples.

“Uhm.” The youth frowned lightly at the proffered apple. “I thank you, but really…”

Thor grinned in the face of his skepticism. “Please, it would do me honor if you would only taste. It is hardly more than your kindness is owed, but it does have a greater worth than its humble appearance would suggest.”

“Well, I…” the lad shrugged and crunched a bite. Thor watched as he ate his own apple, feeling his strength swell and his hurts recede. The youth chewed slowly, his wide blue eyes gone lambent as the setting sun broke through the thinning clouds.

“It’s magic, I…” The youth paused to breathe and examine the palms of his hands. “I feel so…what have you done to me?”

“Ransomed you from death.” Thor said softly. “You are losing that of yourself which is finite.”

The young man turned to stare at him, even as he still chewed. “I am immortal now?”

“Well.” Thor looked up at the marbled pink and purple sky. “You can be slain. But disease and age will trouble you no longer.”

“Then I _am_ immortal.” The young man gave a joyous little laugh. “Who’d want to slay me?”

“Fair recompense for your compassion, good shepherd.” Thor took one peaceful breath as the last sliver of sun vanished beneath the waves.

“Forgive me, I don’t mean to take liberties.” The youth came to half-kneel by the bench. “But may I ask…” He trailed off.

“Will you not speak?” Thor asked after a moment. The well water was as sweet as mead and he took another long pull from the bucket.

The lad seemed nervous of meeting Thor’s eyes; he broke out in a rush. “My mother was kind once to an old man in a gray cloak and she always said that one must be gentle of strangers and earn their blessings not their curses.”

He dared a glance up at Thor and Thor was struck suddenly by how handsome he was, his features were perfectly even and his eyes practically glowed.  He frowned fetchingly under Thor’s scrutiny and wrung his hands.

“That was a momentous gift and you gave it rather lightly.” The youth stammered finally. “You fell out of the sky and it raged for losing you. You slept for a week. This four-legged nightmare won’t stir a step without you and I’ve never seen armor so fine or a hammer so heavy. You are the storm-bringer, are you not? The king of Asgard. The mighty Thor.”

“Very clever, shepherd.” Thor inclined his head. “I do not deny it.”

“My king.” The youth bowed his head almost to the ground.

“And to whom do I speak?” Thor asked, sitting up straight like he was back on the Hlidskialf.

“Balder, my liege.” The youth looked up from his clasped hands. “My name is Balder.”

****

He let Balder fuss about building the perfect fire even though he could not be troubled by the evening’s chill. He could tell that Balder was screwing up his courage. It took a while to fully digest I _ð_ unn’s apples, to grow accustomed to living without the usual fear apportioned to mortals.

“You have been hurt.” Balder finally spoke to the flickering flames of his fire. He did not look at Thor in the shadows.

Thor sighed. He could see where this was going. “Yes.”

“I would avenge you, Thor-King.” Balder said, very formally. He stood as straight and tall as the low rafters would allow. “Rather, I would stand with you to right this grievous wrong to your person.”

“There is no vengeance to be sought, brave Balder.” Thor couldn’t help but be touched. “It is better said that I allowed myself to be hurt. It was a toll I paid and I was not ignorant of the cost.”

Balder blinked. His eyes were so pale in the flare of firelight that he looked almost unearthly. “Surely…why would…I can’t…” He trailed off helplessly, looking very troubled. “You are the Hammer of the Aesir.”

Thor sighed more deeply. “Have you ever been in love, Balder?”

Balder blinked and laughed, sounding more startled than amused. “Have I…been in love?” He made a helpless gesture to the four close walls. “I’ve had some meaningful friendships with dogs. Some sincere affection for a ewe or a ram here and there. But love?”

“I find that hard to fathom. That you live with no love at all.” Thor watched as Balder leaned on the mantelpiece gazing into his fire.

“I guess I…” Balder shrugged to himself and spoke in another rapid outburst. “Gerda and Agnar have a daughter named Edda and I never noticed her before last Midsummer. She was away, I think. But she stays on the other side of Breidablik, the lower pastures with the cows. She’s a milkmaid. I think she’d keep a fine house if she could, she knows lots of things. She’s clever with her hands; she can make lots of things well. She’s made well herself, if you, uh, know what I mean.”

“I know what you mean.” Thor said dryly. Had he ever been this young? Surely not. “What do you think of when you think of her?”

“I just…” Balder looked blank. “She kind of…suits, you know? It would be nice to come home and see her standing there. She’d make things very…comfortable.”

“That’s not a lover, that’s a nursemaid.” Thor said, colder and harsher than he meant to. He discovered that he had twisted his ring halfway up his knuckle. His mood was darkening as the path in front of him grew dim. The thought of returning to Asgard now left sour bitterness on his tongue, but where was there left him?

Balder didn’t look hurt by Thor’s indictment. He came to sit cross-legged at Thor’s feet. He looked up at Thor, entranced. “Do you love, Thor-king?”  

Thor blinked. “I have been married for almost a millennium, are you simple or daft?”

“My father always said that you only took the frost giant to keep the jötnar sweet.” Balder said innocently.

Thor snorted, wondering if anyone had ever put the words ‘jötnar’ and ‘sweet’ in the same sentence before. “No, I took him because my heart demanded I should.”

Balder started chewing on his thumbnail, still rapt. “Will you tell me…I mean, perhaps it is too personal. But as you say, I am…ignorant and I would know what I could of love so I don’t squander my chances.”

“It’s not all birdsong and rose-petals, young one.” Thor blew out his breath. “Sometimes love is more awesome and terrifying than all the storms I command.”

“Truly?” Balder leaned over and tugged a full skin off a hook near the door. He passed it to Thor who took a measured swallow. The liquor burned the soft places in his mouth.

“What an old soul you are.” Thor squinted at his host. “When I was your age, I only wanted stories of hard-fought battles and last stands.”

“To hear you speak one would think they were one and the same.” Balder returned with a pert grin and Thor chuckled appreciatively.

“The mortals down on Midgard think that love is a divine gift. And perhaps that is so. But if their love is god-like that means it is also capricious, amoral and beyond sanction. It is not always for the fairest, nor the most worthy. It grips you like a fit. Sometimes it tramples your reason and turns you quite foolish.”

Balder nodded slowly. “That is the kind of love I would have, if I could choose.”

“No milkmaids then.” Thor mocked, knowing he was being unkind.

The lad tilted his chin to his shoulder. “Perhaps just the right milkmaid.”

“As you will.” Thor took another pull of the aquavit and let his mind wander as he spoke what were becoming familiar words. “Heed me well, for this is not an oft-told tale, this song has gone unsung.”

*~*

“It is not far gone wrong.” Loki grinned wryly. “I can set it right.”

Thor let his shoulders slump in relief. I _ð_ unn had been gone one day and already everyone looked haggard. “Can you?”

“Mmmm.” Loki hummed to himself. “What will you give me if I do?”

“My undying devotion.” Thor offered hopefully.

“I rather thought you had already gifted me with that; am I mistaken? Have you rescinded that blessing, Thor-King?” Loki blinked innocently.

Thor rolled his eyes, resigned. “What do you want then?”

Loki leaned in to whisper in his ear. Thor could feel a hot, ticklish fountain flow up his spine even as goosebumps marched down his neck from Loki’s cool breath. “Ah, that’s…well. I uh—“

He could see the edge of Loki’s broad white grin from the corner of his eye. “It’s truly delightful, my liege, to know that you can still blush.” Loki sighed happily. “Such a paragon of virtue you are to fall prey to my uncouth inclinations.”

“Not so loud, Loki, please.” Thor begged. Fandral and Hogun were looking at them rather uneasily. The entire court knew well to be wary when Loki looked so pleased with himself. Thor was glad that it was only his own person that would suffer Loki’s mischief. “One night of that I’ll give you and gladly, if you’ll be discreet about it.”

“Three nights.” Loki’s lips twitched.

“Two and _just_ you, yes? Not like that time in Alfheim, you promise?”

Loki pursed his lips and looked doubtful. “Just me, certainly, but you know that I am legion…we are many.”

Thor grimaced. Loki was surely quoting something obscure. Loki’s reading list was always extensive and varied, but lately it had been downright odd.  Thor considered what Loki likely had in mind and some of the shameful heat in his belly spread to the tops of his thighs. “None of your doubles, Loki, by Ymir, it’s perverse.”

“Four.” Loki’s face looked as grave as if they were discussing opening diplomatic channels with the trolls. “Just the thought is putting a sparkle in your eye and I’m perverse?”

“You and one other.” Thor conceded.

Loki held up two fingers silently and Thor sighed gustily and nodded. Loki smirked for one moment longer and returned to business.

“This importuning storm giant…why did you not just offer him gold? He could have been paid off and damned with it.” Loki had that peculiar abstracted look he wore when he was plotting. His usual look, in other words.

“I’ve been warned time and again not to stoke their greed. Besides, Heid and I had a plan.” Thor drummed his fingers on the arm of the throne until he considered how it must look and stopped abruptly. “She was going to pretend to be Freya and send for me once he had stolen her off to his stronghold. She enchanted this parchment and…”

“Yes, but how were you assured that he would choose Freya?” Loki asked reasonably.

Thor cracked his knuckles peevishly. “They always choose Freya! Have you seen Freya?”

“Yes.” Loki paused for a beat. “But he didn’t. The heart wants what it wants.”

Thor pinched the inner corner of his eyes. “Yes, yes, yes. And our poor I _ð_ unn is paying the price, Loki, please can’t you...”

“Calm yourself.” Loki tapped his knee soothingly. “The day some scheming storm giant can prevail against me is the day you’ll lay me in my grave. But Frigga must give me her falcon cloak just for a couple of days.”

Thor sighed in relief. “Of course. Will you go now? Taking I _ð_ unn strikes at our heart.” He lowered his voice. “It may seem foolish, but it feels as though this deed presages ill for us all. Like I have made a grave mistake and sown the seeds of our destruction.”

Loki’s eyes sharpened and he looked at Thor searchingly. “Superstition, my lovely? I thought I had cured you of that.”

Thor said nothing and only frowned down at his lap. He tried to make his face only solemn, not worried, but Loki wasn’t fooled for a moment.

Loki slouched down in his twin throne and steepled his fingers over his lap. He spoke in an idle tone. “Say you had split his skull when he stepped into this hall, what have we then?”

“Dishonor.” Thor returned shortly. “Odin’s hall sullied with blood. An eternal feud with the storm giants.”

“Indeed.” Loki seemed to be ticking options off on his fingers. “Or you could have paid him off, as I just suggested. It might have required a hoard like Andvari’s and you well remember the havoc _that_ unleashed. We were knee-deep in dwarvish blood for an aeon.”

 Thor folded his arms and nodded assent.

“Or say you had chosen to placate him with wisdom.” Loki’s eyes gleamed. “Poured him out the mead of Kvasir, toasted him with Mimir’s dark water. That would be a far worse plague than greed to release into his dour land. You would have filled his head so full that his own people would have cracked it open to pick out his brains like the meat in a walnut. Then return wanting more.”

“Do you have a point, Loki?” Thor sighed. “If you do, would you care to arrive at it?”

Loki leaned in and whispered but now it was not heat that followed after, just cold. “Destruction lies at the end of **all** paths, Thor. If you seek another, you seek in vain. You may not like this truth of mine, but you do know it to be true.”

“Well I know.” Thor tried not to fidget, tried to calm his hammering heart. His muscles tightened and he glanced toward Mjölnir. When Loki spoke like this, it made Thor want to pound the world to pieces just to have something to _do_.

“No, I don’t think so. You don’t, not really.” Loki held his gaze a moment and then tilted his chin down seductively. “Not yet.”

Thor set his jaw, refusing to twitch or squirm or look anything less than regal. Loki leaned back and chuckled.

 “If I go now, I should be back in time to meet that elvish envoy.” Loki’s lips curved. “You shouldn’t have to face them alone.”

“Indeed, how might I fare without your diplomacy, you who never open your mouth but for gain or to sow discord?” Thor growled testily. Exchanges with Loki were never particularly soothing, but Thor felt as if Loki had drawn him to a knife’s edge of nerves, foreboding and guilty lust just to spite him now while he felt particularly apprehensive.

“Oh, I open my mouth for a few other purposes.” Loki arched one eyebrow and ran his tongue over his teeth as he stood and bowed to the assembly before taking himself off to Frigga.

Thor cast a glance at Sif and nodded and watched her shoulders soften. She murmured to Volstagg and he nodded. Thor felt the ripples of relief sweep out from the throne. They had been a long time learning that Loki’s methods were often dishonorable, always unorthodox, but also consistently effective.

He took a deep breath and resolved not to worry about I _ð_ unn and the storm giant. Thor thought of what he had promised Loki on his return and pulled the edge of his cape into his lap, glad for the first time in a while for the unforgiving embrace of his armor.

*~*

Balder stirred when Thor paused to drink after recounting the (cleverly edited) story of the wedding feast. He quirked his chin and stammered. “Was it he who hurt you?”

“What? No.” Thor was startled into a laugh. “No…I…why would you think that?”

Balder ducked his head and appeared to be struggling to explain. “You only seem so resigned to being hurt. When you speak of him he seems quite adept but also…ruthless. And you spoke of love when I spoke of vengeance. That is only why I thought thus.”

Thor opened his mouth to speak and then shifted his gaze from Balder to the fire. “Fair enough.”

“It is true, in late years nothing cleared a room in the Golden Realm faster than a few hot words between us.” Looking back, Thor could chuckle. “He was ever one to kick up a fuss. There was once…do you know what lies beneath the skin of the world?”

Balder blinked. “Uhm. The bark of the Yggdrasil?”

“Not hardly.” Thor explained. “If one goes deep enough, the earth _melts_ and there is actually fiery slag churning beneath our feet even now. I would never have known but for one brawl when he pulled molten rock right through the floor.” Thor chortled at the memory of his ruined boots.

Balder had turned green.  He spread his hand over the packed earth at his feet as if to reassure himself it was still solid. “What was the quarrel?”

“I…I don’t remember.” Thor rubbed the back of his neck. He remembered making up.

“I…” Balder ducked his head. “I always thought that love was supposed to be peaceful, a haven, a refuge.”

“Perhaps for some.” Thor sighed and rolled his head against the rough wood of the bench. “Love is just as much about what you need as what you want. He could be the fiercest, cleverest ally in the nine realms or the canniest, craftiest enemy. If that was what I required.”

“You speak as though he were dead.” Balder said, in a tone completely innocent of malice. After a moment of Thor’s silence, he straightened from his lazy sprawl on the floor. “Oh. Oh, I’m…my liege, please…I didn’t know.”

“No, of course not.” Thor said reflexively, feeling the weight of knowledge settle on him again. “Out here on the edge of the world.”

“I’m very sorry.” Balder had flushed with mortification and pressed his hand over his mouth, afraid of unknowingly churning up more unpleasant revelations.

Thor pressed his own knuckles to his mouth. This felt like a dangerous moment, as weakness crawled up to sit on his shoulder and whisper in his ear. This was a remote place where no one knew him save this obliging boy. He could easily give full tongue to his grief, collapse in weeping, rub his face with ashes and crawl around like a wounded animal here.

Loki would sneer. Loki would give him that cold red-eyed glare and slap him across the face with his open palm if he even deigned to touch Thor at all. There was no jötunn word for ‘self-pity’ and Loki despised it even more than other frost giants who didn’t truly understand the concept.

Thor took a deep breath and composed himself. He cast about for a way to calm his racing heart and smooth the troubled lines from Balder’s brow.

“Sometimes he would…” Thor ducked his head. “This is going to sound foolish.”

Sometimes, as they lay in bed together of a morning, Loki would amuse himself by making animal sounds. It was Thor’s to guess what animal Loki imitated as he growled or mewed or called or screeched. Sometimes the beasts were of Midgard, Jötunheim or Vanaheim and Thor had to rack his brains for vague recollections of giraffes, gyrfalcons and gryphons and their noise. And Loki would either scoff or purr as he guessed.

“Like this one, this was a favorite.” He tried to replicate Loki’s effortless squawk.

“Always that loud?” Balder winced.

“A dodo. It was some Midgardian thing and I think they are lost to the realms entirely. But if you were to find one, that is how it would sound.”

Balder grinned uncertainly.

“It was the most foolish and simplest thing imaginable.” Thor swallowed. “And…I have great power you understand, great wealth and resource…and I would give **all of it** to listen to him chirping at me again.”

Balder shifted before the fire, his uncertain grin turning serious. “I sorrow with you, Thor King and your grievous loss. You know I would help you, were it in my power.”

“I have no doubt.” Thor tried to smile. “Your kindness ennobles this realm, good Balder.”

 ****

Balder rose with the dawn and let Thor walk with him as he escorted what remained of his flock to lower pastures. The direwolf frisked about, content with cracking the marrow out of a few old bones. The sun rose in a clear sky and the air tasted as fresh and crisp as a golden apple. Thor had taken heart in being newly bathed and dressed with a full stomach, accoutered for battle. On a morning like this it was hard to despair.

It was even pleasant to click his tongue and chivvy the lowing sheep along the steep path down to the rolling pasture near the shore. Their antics brought a chuckle to his lips and he would look to Balder to see the simple joy of it reflected back at him. He wondered if there was a better place to live out a very long life.

“Do you return to Asgard?” Balder tapped a straying ewe gently on her woolly hindquarters.

“Perhaps.” Thor sighed, feeling a little of his misery reawaken. “I have some questions that need answering.”

“Perhaps Nornheim?” Balder suggested. “The price is heavy, but they say the sisters know all.”

Thor shook his head wryly. “The price is always heavy, yes, but I know well that they are more likely to confuse than clarify. I have no fear but that it would be pointless.”

“I would go with you, my liege.” Balder sketched a brief obeisance. “I have very little skill but what I do have is yours and I am most willing.”

Thor reached over to clasp his shoulder. “Were you my own brother, I could not feel fonder of you, Balder. And I would have you come and gladly, but for I fear that my quest ahead will be more than a little perilous.”

“All the better.” Balder grinned at him, full of a young man’s fire and Thor could not help but smile back. Balder went pink under his regard and started clucking at his sheep as the path widened out along the edge of the beach.

“Hi, what’s that?” Balder’s eyes suddenly sharpened and he jogged over to the silver inlet where a stream cut through to the sea. A sandpiper raced away from a half-buried scabbard that stuck upright in the sand.

“Ah, I had thought that lost in Jötunheim.” Thor confessed without thinking. Balder gave him a strange look as he picked up the sword and struggled to unsheathe it with heedless schoolboy curiosity. Rainwater and seawater had almost sealed the hilt to the scabbard. Balder handed it to Thor wordlessly and gasped in pleasure as Thor drew it free. “It’s yours then, of course…you must have lost it in the fall. I have never seen the like.”

“It was a morning gift from my…from Loki.” Thor stroked a thumb up the pale ivory blade. “Legend has it that it was made from the fang of a terrible serpent. They call it Mistilsteinn.”

“Mistletoe?” Balder leaned closer to admire it.

Thor nodded. “Since it be so white and deadly.”

“It is so beautiful.” Balder breathed.  The sword caught a shaft of sunlight. It didn’t reflect the gleam but instead seemed more to glow. Beautiful, certainly, but it had a spiteful air about it, as if the blade were as poison as the name suggested.

It came to him then. The thought clutched his heart with icy, venomous fingers.

Thor looked down the length of the translucent blade and felt sudden tears burn the corners of his eyes. “It is, isn’t it?”

He set Mjölnir down, wondering if he would ever pick her up again. He tried to keep his hands from shaking. He would need to be quick before his honor shackled him.

“Why does it sadden you so? Does it make his memory too painful?” Balder asked hesitantly. He shifted his gaze from Mistilsteinn’s deadly beauty to Thor’s face with a pained expression. “I would have thought…please, why do you weep?”

“It only comes to me now what I must do.” Thor said dully. “I must go speak to the black-haired lass, his prized witch-queen.” Angrboda’s words in his mouth were bitter indeed.

“I don’t understand.” Balder shifted his weight uneasily, seeming unsure if he should clasp Thor’s shoulder to comfort him even as Thor lifted the blade.

“Balder.” Thor swallowed a mouthful of salty tears. “I am so…if there were any other way, I would…”

“Thor.” Balder’s eyes grew even more round and shocked. “Please…”

****

“Am I dead?” Balder sat up from Thor’s lap like he was waking from a nightmare. There was a sheen to him now, a misty cast over his form that seemed to refract light like a crystal or raindrop.

“Yes.” Thor kept his hand wrapped around Balder’s wraithlike wrist. He had some vague idea that to let go would be disastrous. He had cradled Balder through his death throes, shushing him and stroking his hair. Thor was now almost completely soaked in lifeblood from his beard to his greaves.

Balder made a small sound as his wide eyes took in his last view of his home. Thor squinted in pain as Balder hauled all his weight around to punch him in the face. “You wretched…whoreson… _níðingr_ \--gah!”

Thor would not have expected a spirit to have so much heft to their fury. The blows felt odd…like cold penetrating his bones and skin. Balder was hammering one-handed at his face and head so fiercely that he wished he’d left his helmet on. He shut his eyes and let Balder vent the worst of his rage, wondering if the blows would hurt Balder’s ghostly fist. Balder leavened his punches with kicks but he wasn’t able to pull free from Thor’s grip.

Finally, Balder stopped his whirlwind assault and just looked at Thor. That was far worse, the betrayal in his eyes seared. “If I curse you, will I be heard and heeded?”

“I don’t know.” Thor said truthfully.

“Then I curse you.” Balder spat at him, but there was nothing to it. “Why have you…” Balder cut himself off abruptly and sagged unwillingly back into Thor’s arms. “My mother…”

“I know.” Thor tried to embrace the spirit. Balder was quite cold to the touch now; the magic of Loki’s ring did not abate the chill in the slightest. “It will be well.”

“What? No it **won’t**.” Balder wailed. “Why would you…”

“You know why.” Thor almost shook him in sudden fury. “I was all night explaining.”

Balder stopped heaving and struggling. Thor took a deep breath, in sudden awe of the lad’s empathy. But Balder was looking out at the half-moon bay where the water was starting to bubble and churn. “Oh.”

They both turned to look. The sky darkened as a black mast pierced the effervescent sea and a ship rose up from the roiling water. The square sail was jet-black and oddly un-sodden, though it had just been submerged. The ship itself was gray and looked oddly pinched and ridged, the clinkered planks set in vertical scallops.

“Oh, I don’t want to.” Balder said vacantly, like a tired child being urged to bed.

“Come.” Thor pulled him firmly down the sand until they were knee deep in water. “I said it would be perilous, did I not?”

“You said a lot of things.” Balder snapped, but his anger burned up his fear. Some kind of magic kept the draft of the ghost-ship very light, which Thor reckoned was unsurprising. They were able to wade right to it. The _drakar_ was piloted by a man-like beast with a human torso, pelted legs and the head of a bull.

“Liveman. Too heavy.” The minotaur held up an odd hoof-like hand to stay him. “No come.”

“No come.” Thor brandished Mjölnir while not loosing his grip on Balder’s forearm. “No ship.”

The creature tilted its head to stare at him from one gleaming obsidian eye, then snorted bullishly and gave a very human shrug. The direwolf pup had dog-paddled to the far side and the spectral boatmen watched impassively as they all scrambled aboard. The ship seemed to sink alarmingly in the water as if it were foundering. Balder gripped the gunwale and cast his eyes back to the green downs and white beach.

The boatmen backed the oars nonchalantly as if the ship was not actively sinking. Balder clutched Thor’s shoulder as the water bubbled up all around them and Hel’s nail ship descended into Ran’s dark realm.

****                                                                                                        

“Níðingr. Bakrauf. _Gýgjarsonr_.” Balder rolled his lip under his teeth and appeared to rack his brains for more imprecations. He expanded on his theme. “Wretched thrall-born bastard troll!”

Thor bobbed his head obligingly. “As you say.”

Balder huffed and jerked at his imprisoned arm but Thor was taking no chances of losing his fare to the corpse-realm. He listened politely as Balder cursed him.

Balder narrowed his eyes and spoke through his teeth. “Ergi!” He watched Thor expectantly even as he half-cringed from the awful word.

Thor pressed his free hand to his mouth to keep from chuckling.

“I mean it.” Balder stomped his foot impotently, wincing at the feel of the uneven, scaly deck. “I bet you got up to all kinds of…things with that frost giant, I bet you let him…”

“Indeed,” Thor interrupted. “The worst thing you can imagine does not even begin to compass it.”

Balder paused, open-mouthed and seemed to lose the ardor of his rage. He turned away from Thor to look out at the dark water rushing around them and he started absently chewing on his fingernails.

“Once we were in Alfheim…” Thor proceeded to tell the story of how Loki had ransomed Freyr’s sword from the dryad who had claimed it for her own.  Even now that story had the power to exhaust him and make him ache in phantom orifices. He remembered everything down to Loki stroking his flanks and praising his stamina. 

Balder’s eyes looked like they’d fall out of his head by the time Thor finished.

“That is…far worse than the worst thing I could imagine.” Balder acknowledged weakly. “I’ve kissed four women. One was my mother.”

Thor went silent.

A long time seemed to pass while they sank down to Niflheim. The darkness was absolute but for the occasional dull phosphorescent glow that filled the ship with a watery gray light.

After an interminable silence, Balder stirred. “I’m sorry.”

“Surely not.” Thor demurred.

“I mean about the…ergi thing.” Balder waved a hand helplessly. “I didn’t understand half of what you just said. All I know about frost giants wouldn’t fill up a tinderbox.”

Balder’s voice came muffled as he’d buried his head in his knees. “Did he leave you an heir?”

Thor snorted. “No fear on that account. I'm sure I have a horde that he’s just neglected to tell me about.”

Balder looked unsettled. “He would do that?”

Thor shrugged. “I’m sometimes careless, as is he. We journey to one of his by-blows even now.” 

“I’m beginning to be very grateful.” Balder said faintly. “That I am not…that I **was not** a god.”

Balder stopped talking abruptly as the captain reached above his giant horned head and torches at the bow and stern flared to life. Thor looked over the gunwale at the oil-black water that rippled up a stony beach. The direwolf leaped over the edge with a woof and a splash. One of the boatmen threw a rope into the shadows and the drakar ship was dragged up onto the clacking stones.

The captain didn’t say a word as they disembarked; he simply pointed one hoof at the landing and the bridge that led from it. Tiny pinpricks of pale white light marked the path that led up to Elvidnir. Thor squared his shoulders and started trudging carefully along the strand.

“Oh, no.” Balder had plucked a stone from the beach. Thor realized it wasn’t a stone, it was a skull. Another wave broke upon the shore, sending skulls clattering over each other like so many pebbles.

“Keep your chin up, Balder.” Thor continued walking, setting his weight a mite more delicately. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

“Well **that’s** comforting.” Balder set the skull back into the water and tried to stomp after Thor peevishly without actually stomping. Thor could hear the direwolf crunching on something in the shadows and he winced. The bridge was made of some dense black stone and they hurried across it.

It was a long walk in the wan light and after a time the bridge seemed to grow narrower until they could not walk abreast. Thor kept his eyes forward and ignored the flutter of wings that occasionally swooped overhead. Balder flinched once and nearly tripped. He shook off Thor’s bracing hand and nearly tripped again.

“Be careful.” Thor tossed a fragment of stone over the edge and they stood for a long moment before it became obvious that there was to be no echoing clatter as it struck the ground. They walked on more cautiously.

Torchlight greeted them as they walked over what sounded like a gushing, churning waterfall. The bridge widened and the lights flickered and Thor realized that he was looking at a hall studded with many columns stretching off into the vast darkness. The ground shone with a deep dark gloss. Thor comprehended that floor was actually liquid; the columns rose up out of a dark fluid that was stirred by an occasional splash and ripple.  The torchlight flickered merrily, reflected in the water and it was true, honest torchlight dancing in a friendly orange-yellow. It made him feel marginally better.

“Welcome.” A voice bounced gently in between the columns. The bridge widened to become the only solid floor of the hall. They came upon a table very suddenly. The voice came again. “Welcome, Balder.”

Balder froze and turned on his heel. Thor turned as well, automatically making an obeisance to the queen of Niflheim.

Hel sat on a throne that seemed to hover over the water on stilts. Then it sidled closer to them and Thor realized that the seat was somehow _alive,_ or at least, mobile. It stumped up on crane-like legs and deposited her lightly in front of them.

“Thor-king.” Hel drawled. “Welcome.” She was dressed as any of the court of Asgard, simply clothed in an indigo gown girdled with marcasite and black pearls. Hel had her father’s cheekbones and raven hair and her green eyes slanted in a pleasing way. Then she stepped further into the light.

Thor stifled his gasp. In the glare of torchlight, he could see through the meat of her cheek to the roots of her teeth set in her jaw. The skull beneath the skin was cleanly visible, her eyes became hollow shadows in full light. The curve of her shoulder was muscle, sinew and bone, her collarbone arched in a deep ivory V.

“My lady.” Thor ducked his head to her again, determined not to show the slightest discourtesy.

Balder said nothing, he simply dropped down in a full bow with his forehead nearly touching the floor.  Hel regarded the back of his head indulgently for a moment and then said only, “You are welcome.”

“Thor-king.” Hel made a show of stepping back to regard him in full. “It has been a while. Tell me, is this your idea of appropriate attire for a visit? To come clothed in the heart’s blood of an innocent man?”

Thor gritted his teeth. So much for courtesy. He had not realized before just how much she resembled her father.

She tipped him a mocking salute. “At least you can still lift your hammer. Is it heavier than it was?”

“A little.” Thor grudgingly acknowledged.

“Then I suppose you must grow stronger yet.” Hel said lightly. “Is that your…wolf-thing?”

The direwolf’s eyes glowed amber-yellow in the flickering light. It yipped at Hel as if it were greeting her.

“I’m responsible for him.” Thor equivocated. Balder glanced at him sharply.

Hel gestured at the torches. “Do you find it is too much light or not enough?” She addressed her question to Balder, who stammered. “It’s just right.”

She dipped her head to him and smiled. “Would you like a tour?”

****

The myriad columns that hid their roots under dark water and their crowns in deep shadow quickly turned into a maze that Thor could not have hoped to navigate. Hel had invited them into a broad-bottomed skiff that seemed to drift without anyone needing to steer it. Hel did not talk much, she left them to observe and question as they would. Thor found himself scanning crowds of Hel’s subjects, looking for any familiar faces but he found none.

The citizens of Niflheim conformed to no order of the races that drifted down to fill their ranks. Thor had expected them to be hushed and dour, but they swaggered and swung and swam about proudly. At first glance they seemed mostly mortal but then he noticed that what he’d assumed to be a trick of the light was genuinely a man with all his limbs doubled. Another had two heads. There was a woman with a long tail, a winged centaur-like creature and as he looked closer what he’d taken for children were revealed to be pale, grub-like homunculi. They had prepared some kind of acrobatic entertainment in honor of his visit.

Balder leaned in to murmur to Thor, “I didn’t expect such…”

“…malformed demons?” Thor surmised in a whisper. Balder shook his head vehemently as Hel bestirred herself.

“Ah yes.” Hel sneered. “One of the many reasons my father keeps me well away from Asgard. He mislikes leaving me prey to the fever of all that _judgment_.”

Thor bit back a reply, feeling only a trifle chastened when he noticed that she’d used the present tense twice.

“Asgard.” Hel wrinkled her nose. “It’s all so beautiful. So _neat._ ”

“Forgive me, lady.” Thor tried to salvage the exchange. “I have journeyed long and I am unsure of my eyes.”

“If you could muster the courage to look just a little closer you would notice that they’re not malformed. They’re fusions. They seek to complete themselves.” She gestured at a man-like being that had forking antlers and four long arms. He strolled arm-in-arm with a female-seeming creature with a snake-like spine and flippers.

Hel continued in a dreamy voice. “That is why they join…fuse themselves, even when it looks painful. They just want to be…whole.”

She turned back to face them gaily. The light reflected off her smooth brow bone. “I suppose to your untutored eye it doesn’t look quite right, but….that is why they come to me. To find their other halves or quarters or thirds. I am for the…incompletes.”

She gestured and the skiff quickly turned itself around.

****

When they returned to her high table, it had been laid with a sumptuous feast. Thor regarded it warily, as he remembered Heid’s warning. Thor decided to deflect a toast with a compliment. “It was kind of you, Hel, to prepare this welcome for me.”

Hel laughed in a way that echoed unnervingly. “Thor-king, my respect for you is in full flower but ‘twas not for you this feast laid.”

She glanced across the table but Balder could not meet her eye. Luckily, he could no longer blush.

“Well, I’m delighted to know that I have your respect.” Thor could not keep himself from a hint of bitterness. “Your hospitality is surely…”

“Enough.” Hel held up one long-fingered hand. “I thought it would be amusing to wait until you worked your way around to it, but I find I weary of your dutiful courtesy. You are of Asgard and the Aesir are not a people given to subtlety. Ask the question that plagues your every thought.”

Thor sat down heavily. “Hel, where’s your father?”

“Daddy no here.” She lisped in a babe’s voice as she grinned up at him. “Daddy go bye-bye.”

His anger felt odd…not its usual hot, bright strength but a colder, blanker emotion that stretched lethargy over his thoughts. “Do you take me for a fool?”

“Love makes fools of us all.” Hel examined a ring that circled her middle finger. Thor saw that it was made of a small glittering lizard with jewel-bright eyes. It curled down one finger and blinked at him. “Did you think to find him here?”

“I hoped to find him here.” Thor set his clenched fists on the table. “As I simply hope. To. Find. Him.”

“He is far from here.” She said idly. Thor felt her keen gaze as his head bowed in despair. “But I know where. Ask me again.”

“Hel.” Thor breathed deeply and tried to re-acquaint himself with his courtesy. “Do you know where your father is?”

“Yes.” She seemed to be communing with the tiny salamander.

“Would you favor me with that knowledge, oh great and wise lady?”

She chuckled to herself and regarded him. A quick slant of torchlight flickered over her face, blanching the purer alabaster of her bones and teeth.

“Thor-King.” Hel tented her fingers. “Do you know anything about the nature of magic and how it is effected?”

A hundred, hundred thousand times had he watched Loki transform one thing to another, shift himself to myriad incarnations, and conjure illusions from air; Thor had seen charms and spells and invocations aplenty.

“No.” Thor growled, unwilling.

Hel regarded him for a moment, but only as if she was a little curious of him, not reproachful. “Magic comes from the union of three elements. The first is a bit of skill and knowledge. The skill to recognize things as they **are** and give no heed to their appearance. To know the true whys and wherefores of things.”

She tipped a wink at Balder. “The next thing you must have is **belief**. This is where a lot of would-be sorcerers fail. Because if you don’t _believe_ in yourself and what you’re doing, how can you expect to shift the fabric of the realms?”

She turned her hand over and conjured a delicate green flame to nestle into her palm. “What my father knew, indeed, what all good sorcerers know is that life is far more mutable and changeable than it seems. The solid lines of our dominion are like bones.” She gestured up to the columns of her hall. “But the skin and vitals we hang between them are malleable, like wax.” She flicked her fingers and the flame danced down the table to curtsy in front of Balder’s plate. He chuckled as it gamboled along the silver rim, sashaying and pirouetting before disappearing in a wisp of smoke.

Thor bobbed his head in acquiescence. That was certainly true. Loki had had belief in abundance, an almost endless fount of arrogance.

“What is the last requirement?” Balder asked, rapt.

Hel cocked her head at him and he instantly dropped his eyes under her green gaze.

“Pain.” Hel reached out a finger and traced it delicately in the air over Balder’s chest. “I don’t entirely know why, but if magic has a currency, it is pain. That is why sacrifice magic is so strong. Because indeed, for all the mortals bleat about going gentle into that good night, death offers a goodly amount of pain.”

Thor’s mouth suddenly went parched. “Does the prowess of a sorcerer speak to his…or, ah, her…reserves?”

Hel looked at him blandly for a moment and then her smile seemed to crack open. He could see the roots of her teeth as she chuckled. “We all have ‘reserves’, Thor-King. Some greater than others, I’ll grant you. My father had a deep reservoir of anguish to draw upon, but that was little of your doing. Rest easy.”

He was about to respond tartly to her condescension when she leaned forward. “You have been working a lot of unwonted magecraft yourself, for all of that.”

“No.” He shook his head in unconscious denial.

“According to you, you went from Jötunheim to Vanaheim which necessitates falling upward.” Hel pointed to where the columns vanished. “Seems a trifle unusual. Then you usurped a dead man’s berth on my ferry, which has certainly never been done before. So apparently sufficient belief and pain can prevail over lack of skill.”

Thor clenched his fists and his armor creaking was loud in the hushed hall. “Hel, it has been very pleasant to witness how well you favor your sire, most particularly his ability to talk the horns off a billy-goat, but could we return to my original query: where is he?”

Hel sighed and the salamander on her finger flicked his tiny ruby tongue.

“My father died on his feet with a sword in his hand. Protecting that which he loved.” Hel examined her fingernails. “In front of a company of Aesir. Garbed as _an Aesir_. With his aims allied to _the Aesir_.”

“What are you telling me, Hel?” Thor leaned forward.

“Where would you think he’d be?” Hel smiled wryly. “He’s in Valhalla.”

After a moment, Thor remembered to take a breath. “ **What?”**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Big thanks to lousy_science for supa-fast beta, theSecretary for brainstorming and aurvandil for the Old Norse curse words.


	4. Blasphemy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> *~* indicates flashback

“You are determined?” Hel said languidly, examining some dark skinned fruit before she ate it. “I saw you hesitate as you stepped to my table, you know what it means if he has eaten their food.”

Balder had just raised a bite to his lips; he rocked his head back to examine it suspiciously. Hel winked at him again and continued.  “You may wish to save yourself…”

Thor thumped his fist hard enough on the table to make the dishes jump. “I will find him, what must I do to make that plain?”

“I am not staying you, it was just…friendly advice.” Hel gave him an arch look as she poured herself another measure of wine and drank it. He could see the shadow of the liquid spilling inside her. 

Thor fiddled with Mjölnir, wanting to be gone immediately. “Can you send us there?”

“Us?” Balder sat up straight.

“I can.” She half-shut her eyes and set down her chalice. “What will you give me?”

“What do you want?” Thor growled. He wondered what kind of frightful levy she would impose and prepared himself for something dreadful. 

Hel sighed and appeared to give the matter some thought. “Leave the direwolf. I have long coveted such a beast and he seems to like me.”  She reached out a hand and the wolf slunk to her side to lick at her fingers with a grateful whine. “A wolf is a hungry animal. I can…sympathize.”

Thor was taken aback. “He is a noble beast and loyal.” Then, as she appeared to be waiting, “If he is content to stay with you, I would be pleased to make you a gift of…”

“I shall call him Fenris.” Hel interrupted. She buried her skeletal fingers in the wolf’s ruff. He put his enormous paw on her knee and they regarded each other gravely. Balder watched with an unfathomable expression. “I have long desired a true companion.”

Balder shifted in his seat uncomfortably.

“We should be away.” Thor stood and pulled out Balder’s chair. Balder looked up like he wanted to protest, then thought better of it. Hel nodded and placed a kiss on the top of the direwolf’s skull before she stood.

“Be conscious of time. It hasn’t the same rhythm that it does in the bright realms as they twist about their stars.” Hel said. She started walking and he followed her. She led them back the way they had come, toward the bridge and the Náströnd.

“Now would be the time for queries, should you have any.” Hel glided along with Balder barely keeping from stepping on her train. She paused at the mid-point of the bridge.

 “Is there magic to set it right? To restore him to what he was?” Thor tried not to sound like he was begging.

“No, there is no magic so mighty.” She declared and then said more gently. “He is now what he was, he will simply have no memory of you, or if he does it will seem faint, like a dream or a song.”

“Yes, but…” Thor clenched his fist as if he could grab their memories and crush them back inside Loki’s skull. “How shall I convince him to return with me, if he does not know me or trust me?” 

Hel smiled at him and reached her bony arms out to squeeze his hands. They felt like nothing but soft flesh even though he could see her finger bones. “You fostered his love once…surely you can do it again.”

“You want him back, as I do.” Thor said slowly, the realization dawning. “You only play at being mercenary.”

She smiled brilliantly. “Perhaps. Then, truly, I have always wanted a direwolf.”

She shoved him with sudden, startling strength and he lost his footing.

****

Thor blinked. He wasn’t sure quite what he’d been expecting, but arriving already knee deep in some creature’s guts was not how he had anticipated making his entrance to Valhalla. Thor thought for an instant that he’d caused an earthquake, the ground was shaking.

After a frantic moment, the sound resolved itself into the footfalls of a massive dire creature that Thor could not have begun to put a name to. It shrieked and tossed its great gray head at him. It was enormous and eyeless and it raged toward them gnashing rows of glistening, dripping teeth.

“Balder.” Thor hefted Mjölnir even as he drew Mistilsteinn from the scabbard. “Get behind me.”

Balder didn’t spare a word to argue as he darted into the shadow of Thor’s cloak. He whimpered faintly as the beast bellowed toward them, stretching out its prodigious neck.

Thor threw Mjölnir into what he reckoned was the center of the thing’s forehead and slashed at its hamstring with his sword, sidestepping as it stumbled. Dazed, the beast tottered sideways and Thor shoved Balder back into a tiny hollow in the bank of the hill before he managed to stab it twice more through the soft part of its toothy jaw while trying not to slip in puddles of its indigo blood. It fell with a mighty tremor. Thor dared a look around.

If he’d ever had a moment of spiritual curiosity, he could have asked his father how he kept the souls of his chosen warriors occupied until the ultimate end drew near. Apparently, Odin fed their ardor on horrifying nightmare creatures conjured up out of dreams. The battlefield spread out around him as far as he could see, full of gruesome corpses and churned-up muck. But it was quiet now; the day’s combat seemed to be over.

“Take these.”  Balder looked uncomprehendingly up at him. He took the daggers that Thor was shoving at him delicately like he wasn’t quite sure what they were for. Thor sighed and tucked the sheaths roughly into his belt. “The _valkyrja_  are not likely to take kindly to us sneaking in here, so try to act the part, if you please.”

Balder scowled and grumbled at Thor under his breath. He fell silent as he pulled one of the blades free. “Is it supposed to do that?”

“What?” Thor asked absently, clambering to the top of a small rise to get a better view. He glanced down. “Yes, they glow in the presence of warriors.”

Balder exclaimed as the radiant blade grew almost too bright to look at and re-sheathed it quickly.

A tall man in clinking chainmail walked around the edge of the monster’s carcass and caught sight of them. He bore a long sword that was etched with dark whorls as if it had been burned. He tucked it away and peeled off his helmet. The weak sunlight turned his sweat-soaked hair from amber-yellow to gold.

“Welcome, Asgardian!” The warrior strode forward purposefully, looking pleased. “Who be you then?”

Thor stopped himself from saying the first thing that came to him. “Uh. Well met, great Sigurd.”

Sigurd made the slightest sketch of a bow. Two more warriors edged around the dead colossus, prodding it gently and exclaiming at its size. They looked like twins and they called a hail at Sigurd and a greeting at Thor. “Ah, an Asgardian! We are favored indeed this day! Helgé and Halfdan, at your service!”

“Customary now for you to say who you are and just what you’ve done.” Sigurd volunteered politely. “Give us a sense of our new shield brother.”

“I would but…it’s only that I am burdened with grave purpose.” Thor knuckled some of the ichor off his face. “I seek one of your company.”

They gawked at him for a moment, forgetting to greet their brethren who kept wending their way through the piles of carcasses. Thor recognized a scarred old fellow as Sigmund. As he stood beside Sigurd, it was like looking at the same man, not only similar faces but the same proud bearing and fearless demeanor.

“What does he say?” The white-haired warrior snapped testily. “How is he called?”

“He doesn’t say.” Helgé nudged Halfdan with the hilt of his dagger. “Rather eccentric, yes?”

I must make haste.” Thor continued, unthinking. “And recounting my deeds would take rather a long time.”

Skeggi Skull-Splitter set down his mace and grinned delightedly. “Oh, discourteous **and** arrogant. I like him already.”

They were starting to cluster round him curiously and it felt so uncannily familiar: battlefield, smoke, the choking admixture of scents: mud, blood, sweat-soaked leather, sour bile, fresh meat. Balder took a step and almost slipped on guts. He straightened himself slowly, wincing.

“Do you know a warrior, about so high?” Thor chopped his hand at Loki’s measure. “Pale skin, black hair, green-eyed, very….” _Clever, tricky, capricious, spiteful, lovely, beloved?_ Thor trailed off, feeling more than a little foolish. They were blinking at him now, looking apprehensive.

“What’s the butcher’s bill, Sigurd?” Frithiof the Valiant called from atop another mound of monstrous imps. “Anything?”

The warrior shifted uneasily, speaking out of the side of his mouth. “New blood today. Won’t give his name. Wants to speak to Uncommonly.”

“The commander?” Frithiof cast a glance over his shoulder and then gazed down at Thor keenly. “In-ter-esting.”

 _That_ is _interesting_ , Thor thought dazedly.

Another warrior, a young man with astonishingly bright red hair and a mouth like a maid snorted, “Will Uncommonly want to speak with him, I wonder?”

He recognized a full dozen of them, mortal warriors of Midgard, some drawn from the mist lands, a few Vanir. Their names came to him in a faint chorus: Buðli, Helgi, Bosi, Herraud, Hildebrand, Ragnar, Egil One-Hand, the Sigurth that men had named ‘Snake-eye’.

A larger cadre of mail coats drew over the crest of the hill and resolved itself into a phalanx of flaxen-haired soldiers. Despite the fact that they were a prickly mass of sword hilts, spears and axes and they were all daubed in gore, they swung along merrily in the way of men who’ve done a good day’s work and expect that the evening shall be pleasant. A strong tenor voice was leading them in a song and they often broke off at the chorus to hoot and cheer.

Thor stood up straight and swiped another quick hand over his face, hoping he wasn’t just smearing the blood and soot.

Loki stalked from the middle of the cluster of warriors like a black panther through a pride of golden lions. He looked straight at Thor and Thor took a breath and steeled himself. It would not be an auspicious start if he were to collapse in tears at Loki’s feet.

Loki smiled at him, or he bared his teeth. And said the words that Thor had long dreaded, “So who are you then?”

Thor opened his mouth and discovered that his mind was blank as a snowfield.

“Won’t say.” One of the original warriors sheathed his blade with a snick. “Seems a little…” He rocked his hand in an unsure gesture.

“Gorgeous sword.” A blond giant of a man took a step to him and Thor stiffened. “Rather a nice hammer and the armor is particularly fine.”

“No name though.” Another chimed in. “Seems like an oversight.”

“Is this a thrall? Did he die with his squire?” One of them poked Balder, who cringed. “Kind of odd.”

“Can’t tell us his deeds….says it would take too much time!”

They all guffawed.

“Time we’ve got, stranger.” Loki purred. “Unless you know something I don’t.” He turned to the redheaded youth. “Do you hear anything?”

“I don’t.” The boy grinned.

“Another day in paradise then.” Loki said archly and the whole company laughed with what looked like genuine pleasure. They had been battle-weary before but Loki’s presence seemed to have perked them all up, gave them a gleam and an edge like newly-sharpened blades.

Loki was looking him up and down, but impersonally…like Loki was some shrewd farmer and Thor was an overpriced bull. Thor felt himself flushing down to the tips of his fingers. Everything that he wanted to say bunged up in his mouth and he was barely able to breathe, much less speak.

“Ah, it’s too bad his wit doesn’t match his size.” Loki patted a careless hand on Thor’s shoulder and Thor looked down at it dumbly. “No matter. You can go nameless for all I care, pretty one.”

“Come.” Loki’s hand tightened and Thor felt himself drawn inexorably onward. “We feast now.”

****

“Why didn’t you just say who you were?” Balder asked reasonably, fingering a plateful of what looked like chestnuts.

“Hush, Balder.” Thor tried to stop himself fidgeting as he watched Loki graciously accept yet another toast.

“I know Hel said that love makes fools of us all.” Balder sniffed at a chalice and raised his eyebrows. “But really…you were a stammering schoolboy for a second there. It was painful to watch.”

“Balder.” Thor growled. “Be silent or…”

“Or else? What? You’ll do something awful to me?” Balder sighed and set the chalice down.

Thor winced and tried to quell the urge to bash his head on the polished wood of the table. The storied halls of Gladsheim were as beautiful and lavish as he’d been led to expect. But he’d also been led to expect that he would come here as a favored prince and war-leader, not as a thief and a spy.

“I don’t think it would have made a difference. My name is not going to make him remember himself.” He did not tell Balder the largest part of the reason: that telling Loki his name and receiving naught but a polite acknowledgment would have felt like a blade in his heart.

Balder probably would have taken that amiss.

 “So if we were to eat this we’d…forget ourselves?” Balder obligingly passed a bowl to the man beside him who was already quite soused.

“Yes…at least in part.” Thor regarded the plates surrounding him suspiciously. Everything looked delicious; it was hard to remember that it was all poison for his purpose. “Hel said you remember everything you’ve learned and forget everything you’ve felt.”

“So any former love, affection, respect, hatred, that’s just gone, is it?” Balder sniffed another dish and grimaced. “That sounds…horrible.”

“See those fell characters over there?” Thor pointed at two warriors, one flame-haired and one fair, who spoke quietly among themselves in a strange tongue. “I knew them as Cuchulainn and Fionn mac Cumail, but here they call themselves Setanta and Deimne the White. Which I think is what their mothers called them.”

“Perhaps that’s why they were so insistent you name yourself earlier.” Balder mused. “Because if you don’t and then you eat something who’s to remember?”

That was a sobering thought. Thor looked on enviously as the tankards around him foamed. As yet, their lack of appetite hadn’t drawn any comment.

“There is a painful logic to it.” Thor watched as Loki made some witticism that had half of the room falling off their benches. Others tripped over from the kegs to get in on the joke.

“How so?”  Balder ducked as someone carelessly flung a knife at his drunken seatmate. Despite the man’s deep inebriation, he still managed to pluck the blade from the air.

“Well, for example. That man there?” Thor shot a dark glance across the room. Balder sat up and looked.  

“The one standing with his arm around your beloved and sort of whispering into his ear?” Balder said, far too innocently.

“Yes. That one.” Thor gritted his teeth. “His name is Einar Volundson and if he were to remember anything of his former life, the last thing he would remember is my _beloved_ slashing his throat and putting a dagger in his heart.”

“Hmmmm.” Balder left off playing with the chestnuts. “You’re right, their morale would suffer if they remembered things like that.”

“So…they have something of themselves…they still have their names and what they’ve learned. But everything…personal, everything that connected them to life, everything that would keep them from being pure warriors, the Chosen, the Einherjar….that’s gone now.” Thor said, sounding as hollow as he felt.

They were silent for a time, watching as Loki held some graybeards rapt with his recitation of the Rigsðula. There was a brief silence when he finished and then another crowd surrounded him wanting his opinion, his approval, a smile or a jest.

“They love him here.” Balder said after a time.

“Why should they not?” Thor muttered. “He’s well clever enough to lead, he’s as fierce as they come, he’s got plenty of imagination and daring…”

“Plus he’s a shameless flirt with a great singing voice.” Balder finished.

“He is not!” Thor contradicted, loudly. Loki barely looked up from where he was tugging on some youthful fighter’s braids, murmuring what had to be compliments as the fellow was blushing red as a sunset.

Balder sighed and turned to regard Thor, seeming unmoved by his fearsome scowl.

“Come on, it’s not so dire.” Balder nodded cheerfully. “Hel said it was possible. He’ll remember eventually. All you have to do is make him fall in love with you again and you’ve already done that once, right? What did you do before?”

Thor leaned heavily on the heel of his hand. “I..I just. I was…myself?”

“So. Yourself.” Balder cocked his head and examined him critically. “Blond, blue-eyed, well oversized, arrogant, reckless, and devoted to martial arts and crafts?” Balder turned back to survey the room. “Truly that does make you unique.”

“You were such a sweet boy, Balder.” Thor snapped, hurt. “Death does not become you.”

 “That one’s taller than you.” Balder pointed at Björn Twice-Killed. “And…hate to say it, but he’s better-looking too.”

“Balder.” Thor buried his face in his palms. “Please be quiet.”

“Fine.” Balder slumped back against the cushions and looked up at the gold-mosaic ceiling. “Go be yourself.”

Thor pondered for a while, watching as the crowd around Loki ebbed and flowed as a few fighters succumbed to the mead. When they paused to refill their tankards, Thor stood up and crossed the floor.

“I must have a word with the commander.” He ducked his head in what he hoped looked like a respectful manner even as his tone brooked no dissent.

They all turned to look at him as a body and Thor had the weird sensation of being in a crowd of blue-eyed dogs, snarling around their master. They looked incredulous that a stranger had dared to engage them.

“I would speak with Loki.” Thor made his tone a trifle more peremptory.

They scowled at him, again as a body, except for Loki who was deeply engaged in a chin-wag with a sandy-haired man who had a scar carved right through his left eye.

“One does not simply walk in and begin prattling at Loki the Uncommonly Vicious, commander of the Einherjar.” One of the myriad tall blond warriors demurred in a tone designed to get the hall on its collective feet. “That privilege must be earned, nameless one.”

“I’ll take my privilege from your hide, Frithiof.” Thor bared his teeth. “The world might have called you ‘the valiant’, but I care not a whit. I. Would. Speak. With. Loki.”

“Stranger, have a thought for where you are.” One of those who had been mortal--scarred and red-headed with one lock of white hair at his temple like a banner—stood up quickly with a tankard. “Drink to our health, to our friendship and brotherhood and then perhaps, after a while, you may speak to the Uncommonly Vicious.”

“No.” Thor pushed the tankard aside and jostled past the man in an effort to keep up with Loki and his retinue. “I shall neither drink nor wait.”

The hall fell silent. It seemed like between one breath and the next all the copious life went still and looked straight at Thor. Thor blinked but he did not swallow. He stared back at all of them so that the insult and discourtesy should be cast into higher relief.

Every man round the tables seemed to rise as one. The storied legions of all ages faced a nameless Thor. Except Loki who scratched his chin and chuckled. Loki stepped up on a bench, using Frithiof’s shoulder as support to seat himself directly on the high table.

They weren’t even scowling now. They seemed to be barely reining in their delight and Thor found an answering exultant chorus in his own blood.

“Come on then.” Thor grinned. “Let’s be having you.”

****

“As amusing as this is…” Loki said after two hours. “I find myself very curious as to what he has to say.”

Thor paused, panting. He blinked the sweat out of his eyes. Loki was standing next to Signy, Brunhild, Hlökk, and Randgrið and they all had their heads cocked at the same bemused angle. Thor straightened. A large number of swollen, bloodshot, blackened eyes watched him re-settle his grip on Mjölnir.  

The hall was in ruins. Thor winced and wished he had met Sigurd and Sigmund once in life. The Volsungs had almost done for him; he thought his knee might be broken. Balder appeared to have taken refuge under a bench and was watching Erik Bloodaxe slowly regain consciousness next to him with the  horrified fascination of a person watching a snake swallow a rat.

“Boudicea?” Loki tapped his lips with his index finger. “Is this…?”

The warrior queen huffed a breath and shrugged. “There are halls and halls.”

“True enough.” Loki acknowledged. “Though I did like this one. No matter. We’ll move to the north side.”

There was a rumble of assent. Everyone who was still somewhat mobile set themselves to drag or carry those who were not. Loki beckoned somewhat imperiously to Thor and led him down a gallery that opened up onto a terrace that overlooked the plain to the sunrise horizon. Thor followed eagerly, hitching Mjölnir at his belt and surreptitiously combing his fingers through his damp hair.

When they were alone, Loki turned to him and smiled gently. “That was quite a display.”

Thor nodded and stifled his flinch when Loki patted his shoulder again.

“Now come,” Loki said in his most appealing way. “I could not be more curious…tell me of yourself.”

That smile was just friendly; it was Loki’s indulgent, confessorial, tell-me-everything smile.

Thor yearned at him and launched into the tale of their meeting, rather quickly and clumsily. Loki’s eyes sharpened and Thor held him captive with the story of the war’s end in Jötunheim even as he grew breathless trying to tell it.

Loki put out a hand to stop him before he’d said one hundred words. Loki’s eyes looked so sharp and avid that Thor cheered inwardly, surely Loki was already more than halfway to remembering himself.

“You mean to tell me…” Loki paused. “That I am a cursed….”

“Uh, well.” Thor started to feel a bit uneasy.

“…shape-shifting.” Loki’s eyes glittered.

“Gifted with it.” Thor offered, desperately.

“…seiðmaðr.” Loki continued.

Thor rubbed the back of his neck. “…again, I uh…”

“ **FROST GIANT**?” Unexpectedly, Loki shouted and Thor winced and clenched his fists to keep from wringing his hands.

“What does that matter…?” Thor started weakly and then stopped himself as Loki was giving him an incendiary look.

“Oh, but I am forgetting the best part.” Loki smiled at him, the close cousin to his beautiful smile…the smile that was all teeth with the promise of blood. “The part where I am all these things and _ergi!_ ”

Loki made a gesture that encompassed the whole of Thor.

“Yes, I believe that’s truly…the cherry on that cake.” Loki turned away, shaking his head in disbelief. He folded his arms and bowed his head, seemingly deep in thought.

“Does it begin to, uhm….” Thor cast about, still hopeful. Perhaps his incautious confession had awakened something in Loki’s memory.

“I wonder if the pleasure of killing you right now would outweigh the pleasure of killing you in a more public forum.” Loki mused. “Say tomorrow, before supper. Setanta could take bets.”

Loki looked at him and held a hand up and Thor had the sinking sensation that Loki was imagining his head off at the neck.

“I wonder if they’ll let me weave your hair into the Glasir-oak. That would look quite fierce I imagine.” Loki continued in the same idle tone.

“You could try it.” Thor folded his arms and scowled.

Loki shook his head. “Why would you say such cruel things to me?”

“I…” Thor said weakly. “Are they then so cruel?”

Loki snorted incredulously and waited until it was obvious that Thor’s wits would not return and then gestured to the horizon with a flourish.

“What kind of guardian would I be if I let a madman just go wandering about wreaking havoc in Gladsheim, setting all awry with his odd fancies?” Loki seemed to be thinking aloud. “Is this some test? Does Odin doubt me?”

“N-no?” Thor was unsure which of them was a rhetorical question.

“Oh, you speak for Odin now?” Loki turned so quickly, his surcoat belled out.

“I feel peculiarly well-suited to do so.” Thor said mechanically.

“You **are** mad.” Unexpectedly, Loki laughed. “Odin is good to me, indeed. The meat was starting to lose its savor; perhaps a touch of madness is what is required to make it taste again.”

Thor stiffened when Loki patted his cheek.

“You may live, nameless one.” Loki stepped close enough that Thor could have counted his teeth. “But I don’t want to hear more of your folly and foolishness, you understand? You’ll earn your place as we all do and keep silent until we’re called upon.”

“Or else what?” Thor snarled incautiously.

Loki smiled his intoxicatingly lovely smile. “If you die here, you lose more than your name.”

****

“How did it go?” Balder fell into step behind him.

“Poorly.” Thor said dully. “I started wrong.”

“What does that mean?” Balder frowned. “You didn’t try to kiss him, did you?”

“No. I just--” Thor tried to focus on the silver lining. “He’s not going to kill me, he says. At least right now.”

“Oh.” Balder nodded. “Well…that’s good, I suppose. Also apparently out of character.”

Thor raised an eyebrow.

“I was talking to the Eriks and the twins.” Balder gestured vaguely at the hall behind. “They couldn’t quite remember when Loki first arrived--everyone always arrives on the battlefield, usually right in the thick of things, that’s some kind of…rule.”

Thor shrugged. “Makes sense.”

“Maybe to you.” Balder made a face. “One thing that they agreed on was that he fights like a _berserk_. Helgi said that he’ll always remember when he first saw Loki because his hair was streaming blood and his eyes had gone red with rage.” 

Thor stopped to listen.

“So _he_ gave his name.” Balder frowned testily. “And after a handful of days--they’re a little vague on how long--he picked a huge fight with the former commander and it ended in _holmgáng_. And it got a little messy for a while and that’s why they call him ‘the Uncommonly Vicious’. They say he’s calmed down quite a bit since, but he still reckoned to be pretty…volatile. They never know if he’ll be sweet as honey or fierce as a wounded badger.”

“He has no notion that he’s a frost giant.” Thor said. “I imagine that’s confusing.”

“Well, he wouldn’t would he?” Balder reasoned. “You eat the food, you drink the mead, you forget everything but that you’re Odin’s chosen because that’s what everyone tells you all the livelong day. Did you know you can die here?”

“I heard.” Thor blew out all his breath.

“Apparently when you die--I’m going to say this wrong—you…evanesce.” Balder said carefully.

“You what?”

“You vanish. It’s as if you never were. They don’t know what happens, maybe Hel does.” Balder paused and swallowed. “But you’re lost to Valhalla. But when he leads the charges, fewer of them die.”

Thor nodded. It made sense. Loki had often complained about the Aesir instinct to hail what was merely a lack of caution as a sign of valor.

“Then I was talking to Randgri _ð_ _._ _”_ Balder pressed his palms to his cheeks and shook his head. “Who is--”Balder made a helpless gesture as if to encompass the whole of the _valkyrja_. “There are no words. But she was telling me that she approved because there are not as many warriors as have been. Many came from Midgard. And now they fight in such an odd fashion on Midgard that it is hard to gauge their valor. When the _valkyrja_ do take one, they must be taught to use a sword or an axe.”

“Passing strange.” Thor said. Instinctively he strode at a faster pace.

“Where are you going?” Balder asked nervously.

Thor stopped. He had been headed back to the hall with an unconscious desire to get blind drunk. He sighed gustily and turned on his heel.

“Let’s find a quiet corner and you can practice a few passes with those blades.” Thor jerked his chin at Balder’s daggers.

Balder reflexively tightened his hands over the hilts as if he were trying to guard them from mishap. “Must we?”

“This is Valhalla.” Thor said gently. “And it’s almost dawn.”

****

“Hey!” Frithiof bellowed at Thor. “What are you on about, get back here!”

“I just thought to save you some trouble.” Thor marched back to the line, turning his back on the monstrous horde that lumbered and slithered and scuttled their way across the plain. “I can…”

“Yes, I’ll tell you what you can. You can stand there until we decide on a formation and then go where we tell you.” Frithiof pointed at a spot well behind the middle guard. “No foolhardiness from you, nameless one.”

“I can do much more…” Thor started, icily.

 “You’ll stay in the rearguard until we’ve seen your mettle. Until we can weigh your skill, you can’t be haring off all willy-nilly.” They were all glaring at him, except Loki, who looked bored. In the confines of the hall, they had seemed many. Spread across a vast dark plain in the faint gray light of dawn, Thor saw how few they numbered. The most valorous were not a multitude.

A few words from Loki and the bellowing Frithiof had them arranged into an echelon formation. They fanned out with Sigurd taking point, like an arrowhead pointed at the enemy.

Balder was staring at the horizon with a peculiar set cast to his features and Thor remembered that Balder was a shepherd who’d first held a sword the day before yesterday. Thor shouldered over to stand beside him.

“This is going to get ugly, isn’t it?” Balder said in a small voice.

“Just stay behind me.” Thor reassured him. “And be prepared to duck.”

The mongrel horde of spectral monsters and demons squawked and ululated as they tore across the plain. Loki’s echelon broke back into a pincer maneuver that funneled a host right to the rearguard where Thor, Helgi and Björn Twice-Killed waited to engage before the rest of them attacked from all sides. Thor let his reflexes take over and concentrated on carnage. Finally, there was something he could fall into, immerse himself utterly with no time to brood on his woes. The rhythm of slaughter overtook him and he bellowed as he swung, giving voice to his pent-up rage.  

One of the enormous evil-eyed trolls actually gave him a challenge for a moment or two. It was mounted on a giant slavering terror that put it well above sword-height. Blows to its head did nothing but make it roar and swat at him as he leapt. It took some coordinating and a number of false starts before he managed to fling Mjölnir in time with his spring to marry a blow to the skull with a sword in the eye.

When the troll toppled, its mount shrieked loud enough to bring all nearby skirmishes to a standstill. Finding itself freed, the beast immediately attempted to retreat back whence it had come, right back into the thick of the malevolent militia, dragging the corpse of its erstwhile rider.

Thor leaped up to grab the hanging fringe of the thing’s fur and grimly hung on while it galloped down the field between the ranks of the monstrous horde. He managed to cling tight enough to climb onto its bony back as it grunted and bucked furiously as it fled. In the thick of the fiendish army, Thor flung Mjölnir to the left while he scythed down the right side with Mistilsteinn, so quickly and cleanly that most of them died standing up with their heads precariously balanced on their shoulders. The beast snorted and foamed, terrified by Thor’s weight and scent. It kept galloping to the edge of the plain and Thor threw himself free at the last moment as the creature dived headlong into the void.

He trudged back along the lines of dead he had left to find a throng of warriors staring at him. Frithiof and Setanta were glaring, but Loki just looked mildly amused. “Well…I see that you are…”

“Marginally helpful?” Thor volunteered wryly.

“Indeed, nameless.” Loki arched one haughty eyebrow. “You took the very words from my lips.”

****

As impressive as it might have seemed, the feat did not win him a seat at the high table. Thor could barely bring himself to sit where he was bid and his scowl ensured that the places around them were slow in filling.

Balder was simply jubilant to have survived his first day. He didn’t seem to notice that they were being slighted and that the eyes that followed Thor around the hall were filled with more suspicion than gratitude. They played at eating for a time before Balder muttered low. “Why did your father make this place?”

“To honor fallen warriors.” Thor thumped Mjölnir onto the table and glared at the man next to him who glared back. “To keep his swords sharp for Ragnarök.”

“Kind of rough on the swords though, isn’t it?” Balder looked wry. “No peace or rest.”

“You saw them today.” Thor shifted uncomfortably on his chair. “The most valorous love battle.”

Balder winced. “I am not one to gainsay Odin Allfather. But I imagine that some of the bravest just loved keeping their families safe.”

Thor looked up at the high table at Sigurd and Sigmund. They sat at opposite ends of the board and it occurred to him that they had no notion that they were father and son. Sigmund had been slain long before his son had drawn breath.

“It was ever said in Valhalla, one might feast with the gods.” Balder picked up a shank of meat and then put it down. “Though you might not know it when you do.”

“It’s true.” Thor tapped his upper lip with his knuckles. “Some of these men have _prayed to me_. And now they behave as though I were some thrall-born intruder.”

“Maybe they pay you the greatest compliment of all.” Balder said slowly.

“How’s that?” Thor grunted, picking up a tankard and then slamming it down in a huff.

Balder cut his eyes sideways. “If they had never felt anything for you, they would remember you, yes?”

****

They were always different. Thor crushed a gibbering demon and flung Mjölnir at a winged creature that had attempted to snatch at Balder with wicked claws. Their ghostly enemies always erupted from new directions and they were always manifestly different from day to day. One good thing about being consistently assigned to the rearguard of every action was the occasional opportunity to observe the field.

It did not seem to aid much when he slew them quickly. The presence of the enemy seemed to depend on time; they came in no fixed number. They would come until the light began to fade and if he killed vast numbers in the forenoon, that just meant more to occupy them all afternoon. Loki seemed to have realized this and many of his strategies relied on positioning the enemy hordes for a sudden scourge at the end of the day.

Thor absently crushed another screeching, fanged thing and noticed that Balder was in trouble. The winged creatures were back. One had grabbed the end of the halberd Balder had been wielding and jerked it out of his hands. Without his halberd, all he had were his borrowed daggers which were a short-range solution to a long-range problem. The winged monsters had talons and fierce stabbing mandible bones and they circled Balder in a lethal cyclone.

The twins had noticed Balder’s predicament and they were dashing to his aid. Thor was marginally closer and he winced when one of the creatures struck Balder’s shoulder hard enough to make him howl. Thor got two of them with Mjölnir, but then Balder drew his daggers and they blazed like tiny suns.

Balder flailed about wildly with the radiant blades, and the shafts of brilliance dazzled friend and foe alike. The winged creatures shrieked loud enough to split the air and took to the skies in retreat. Thor flung his hammer again but then he had to shield his eyes. He chased them out of eyeshot, got distracted with some stone-trolls (which looked disturbingly like frost giants) and by the time he got back, the battle was over. Loki was commending Balder’s shrewdness.

“That’s a trick we haven’t tried.” Loki grinned indulgently. “Clever of you, young one, to think of it.”

Frithiof frowned and sucked his teeth. “I mislike sorcery. Such tricks and cunning ill become a warrior.”

“Oh come now.” Loki shrugged and said loftily. “An ensorcelled blade is hardly _cunning_. Ask Sigurd if he cares to part with his dragon-slaked Gram or you, nameless…any magic in that bone-white pig-sticker of yours?”

Thor took sudden heart and drew his sword with a flourish. “Mistilsteinn was made of the fang of a great serpent. It is--”

“Remarkable that the blade is named, yet you are not.” Loki mocked absently. Ragnar smirked behind his shoulder and Thor felt his fingers tingle as they tightened on the hilt. While Loki inspected Balder’s daggers, Thor bared all his teeth at Loki’s favorite who just sneered back vexingly.

“How are **you** called?” Loki had turned to Balder with a devastating smile.

Balder ducked his head and practically chirped. “Balder, uh, my--uh. My name is Balder.”

“Balder.” Loki clapped his shoulder with approval and grinned. “Balder the bright.”

“The shining one.” Erik Bloodaxe offered.

“Fairest of us all.” Loki finished.

There was a chorus of laughter and acclaim, even as Frithiof scowled and Ragnar looked uncertain. The warriors turned back to the hall while roaring Balder’s new nickname, calling him to light the path ahead.

“He’s not as dark as he’s painted.” Balder didn’t seem to notice the mire of blood and muck that they were trudging through anymore. He was almost skipping. “I think he likes me.”

“Pull yourself together.” Thor growled, and then gritted his teeth at his own churlishness. How many men had turned their shining faces up for his approving words and careless nicknames? More than he could ever count.

Balder had ducked his head low enough so Thor couldn’t take offense at his expression. Thor sighed and relented as they took their place at the lower table. Loki was deep in discussion with his lieutenants but he did spare a moment to smile at Balder and tip his drinking horn in acknowledgement.

 “This is so strange.” Thor jerked testily on the braid behind his ear. “It’s like being on the wrong side of a mirror.”

“You could tell them that he’s a frost giant.” Balder suggested hesitantly. “Then he would be forced to…”

Thor hissed in disgust. “Then I would be transformed from ‘mildly eccentric’ to ‘quite mad’ and we would find no seat at these tables.”

“You could fight him.” Balder said doubtfully. “ _You_ could become the commander.”

“I suppose I could.” Thor shook his head doubtfully. “But how does that aid my cause? I want him to love me, not envy and resent me.”

Balder threw up his hands. “I don’t know! I don’t know anything! Nothing of love or war or…whatever ridiculous game you’re playing. I’ve got no call to be here, I should be back in Hel or…”

Balder trailed off, seeming a little surprised by his own outburst. He turned to Thor and sighed. “Maybe you should go find a quiet spot and get some rest. It becomes obvious that you are not of the dead.”

*~*

“Come over here.” Thor drawled, setting Mjölnir on the floor.

“No.” Loki still leaned on the pillar next to the balcony. “I shan’t.”

Thor turned to take off his cloak and braces, hiding his grin. Loki looked as cool, contemptuous and untouchable as ever, but that was just what Thor wanted right now. Thor peeled out of his armor and aketon. Loki had turned away, looking out at the glacier that surrounded the stronghold of the rime-giants.

Thor took off his boots and joined Loki at the window.

“You haven’t asked me if I slew him.” Thor let the tips of his fingers hover over the back of Loki’s neck.

Loki snorted and tossed his hair scornfully. “Either you slew him or he slew you. And you look awfully solid for a _draugr_.”

“Mmmmm.” Thor agreed, pressing into Loki’s hip. “Come feel how solid.”

He struck hard and quickly because he wanted to; his blood was still hot and thunderous from the duel. It had been arduous indeed to separate each of Thrivaldi’s heads from his necks. And Loki fought back so satisfyingly, he writhed hard, almost out of Thor’s grip. The lithe strength of him made Thor’s teeth itch and so he bit down in the delicious flesh of Loki’s shoulder.

Thor was achingly hard by the time he flung Loki down on the wool tappet and settled between his thighs. Loki snarled a few words and Thor braced himself but it was only a spell that left his clothing barely tangible and easy to strip off.

Thor reached between Loki’s knees, grabbed his wrist and pulled his arm taut, jerking his shoulders and chest flat against the bed. Thor mounted him immediately; Loki was already arching and twisting in blatant invitation. Fully sheathed, Thor stopped for a long moment, feeling Loki’s breath grow deep and even. It was comforting that Loki needed this as much as he did.

Loki just rolled his hips when he grew restless. He turned his head to Thor’s balancing hand and bit his wrist hard. Thor shifted his grip to Loki’s upper arms and began to fuck him brutally, relentlessly, feeling the tension slowly leech out of both of them. Loki spread his knees and rutted viciously hard against the bed until his trembling release quaked through Thor and made him spend, roaring.

“Are you wroth with me?” Thor slowly released Loki’s arms watching the phantom prints of his hands fade from Loki’s pale skin.

Loki rocked his hips. Thor mouthed Loki’s neck thoughtfully, noting the thin thread of tension under his lips.

“You seem…unsatisfied.”  Thor rolled over and thumped down on to the bed next to him and was gratified to hear Loki chuckle. Loki turned and winced as he stretched. He cupped his palm over his spent cock, giving Thor an arch look.

“I mean…you seem unsatisfied _with the duel_.” Thor explained laboriously. As an afterthought, he lapped the flat of his tongue over Loki’s nipple.

“Welcome to my home, Thor.” Loki gestured and his skin rippled from pale to blue. “Welcome to the vast space between how things seem and how they are.”

“You are not angry truly?” Thor murmured in between Loki’s shoulder blades. “I thought you wanted him slain.”

“I do…I did.” Loki slid away and stood up. He did not seem to notice that his thighs were gleaming and dripping wet and Thor’s cock jerked a little. “It is only that being slain in a duel with the Prince of Asgard gives him rather more honor than he is due, the wretch. I was going to poison him.”

Thor rolled onto his back, stretched and sighed. Loki’s feud with Thrivaldi had been tiresome for four centuries. Thor had been delighted with the prospect of ending it. He watched Loki cross the room, wondering if he had the wit to argue or the will to apologize.

“I didn’t realize how much you hated him.” Thor sighed. “I cannot imagine wanting to steal honor from the very moment of another’s death, even though he be your greatest foe.”

“Of course you didn’t realize. You have never hated, my lovely.” Loki mused, his face inscrutable. “You have never been afraid.”

 “I am sorry if you wanted it otherwise.” Thor tried to muster up some regret as satiation made him loose and obliging. “But he did challenge me and…I cannot be other than I am.”

“I know. Well I know.” Loki muttered. “It was not difficult to gain fluency in your…” He licked his lower lip. “…tongue.”

Thor sat up to scent Loki in the close air of their chamber. Loki had curled back on the far side of the bed without him noticing. In the firelight, Loki’s blue skin looked purple-black.

“For example.” Loki looked at him with half-shut eyes. “When you tilt your head up like that…have you noticed how often you do that when you speak with me?”

Thor paused and then grinned, not lowering his chin.

“Another might say that you like it well to look down your nose at me when we speak.” Loki’s voice was almost a purr as he drew closer.

Thor rolled his shoulders back as Loki’s fingers crept over his collarbone He sat and slouched back onto the heels of his palms and let his knees turn out as Loki stooped to bite his jaw.

“When I know that you only want to show me this lovely neck.” Loki murmured, drawing his teeth over the sinew of Thor’s throat. “To show me how sweetly you can submit.”

“Yes.” Thor gasped to the ceiling as Loki’s fist in his hair drew his chin higher yet. Loki already had a hand between Thor’s thighs teasing them apart, but he left off for a moment to cup Thor’s face like treasure. Loki’s light fingers made Thor shiver and whine as he stroked the length of Thor’s nose, his cheekbone.

“I’ll always know you.” Loki whispered and it sounded like a threat.

*~*

Thor blinked awake, thinking _Liesmith._

He stirred himself to stand and step over the few drunken bodies strewn before the door. The sun was just a murky bruise of light above the gray plain. He stood and watched as the edges of the horizon darkened with that day’s enemies.

“Thought you were going to rest.” Balder joined him, stretching. “You still look weary.”

Thor shrugged and pulled Mjölnir from his belt to spin her back and forth. He did feel weary, but more hopeful than he had since he’d arrived.

“I know now what I must do.” Thor nodded to himself. “He thinks I cannot be other than I am, but he has forgotten.”

“What exactly has he forgotten?” Balder stood pale and grim in the morning light, looking resigned. These battles were stern training indeed. Balder’s ghostly eyes had lost all of their sunlit innocence.

“Before I was anything else, I was raised to be a soldier.” Thor glanced up as a ray of light pierced the cloud. “I can take an order.”

****

Thor fought for three days with his tongue firmly clenched between his teeth. He did not offer one suggestion; he humbly stood and nodded at whatever orders he was given. He reined himself in from at least half-a-dozen skirmishes that he could have quickly ended and did not utter one word of praise or blame.

Observing the effects of Loki’s command made him grin wryly. The Einherjar no longer always fought alone in a melee, they had been persuaded to use scouts and stealth and on occasion even used the enormous carcasses of their opponents to stage ambushes.

After a handful of days, he and Balder were allowed to sit at a table mid-way up the hall or at least, the warrior whose normal place it was did not feel like challenging Thor when he sat. Balder had become quite adept at playing with food until one would have had to be sharp-eyed indeed to note that he and Thor never partook.

After the first flush of their hunger had subsided, the fighters began to clamor for a story. Loki let their appetite build until the hall was practically frothing. His eyes caught on Thor’s for a bare moment and Thor was reminded of one of the many nights on campaign in Nornheim which seemed quite similar to this: a borrowed hall, sore limbs, strange ale.

*~*

His warriors had been tired then, grumbling and footsore with morale at a low ebb from long days clashing with the agate-trolls. On the fly, Loki had composed a devilishly catchy song that was almost a chant entitled ‘the Hammer of the Aesir’. It had left Thor deeply pleased, even as he felt himself reddening as his soldiers had shown their approval by shouting the chorus.

“Rather a beguiling tune, magpie.” Thor hummed it to himself later as he unlaced his hauberk. “But I’m left with the vague suspicion that the last three verses were a thinly-veiled ode to my cock.”

“Oh Thor, truly? You would slander me so?” Loki said, stretching languidly, his bare arms sapphire against the furs. “The whole thing was a paean to your cock, the bit at the end just got rather less subtle.”

“Loki!” Thor sagged, too tired to remonstrate with him.

“Oh come on, the only thing that should surprise you is that I waited until now to school everyone.” Loki patted the bedroll next to him. “Get down here…I want to re-phrase the fourth verse and I need some inspiration.”

*~*

Thor sighed down into his empty chalice and raised his head in time to catch the edge of Loki’s green gaze.

 “I shall tell the tale of Agantyr and his blade the Tyrfing.” Loki leaned back and seemed to tip Thor a wink. “Cut through iron and stone it could, and once unsheathed would never retreat to the scabbard until it had quaffed deeply on blood. Heroes’ blood, of course, it was not easily sated with the blood of fools and mortals…”

The warriors sat enthralled until Loki had finished his tale. Thor wondered if he had been rendered so slack-jawed and witless when Loki had first gifted him with the story. Instead of a high-ceilinged hall, it had been a cavern hollow on Jötunheim when they’d been trapping the blizzard hawks that circled the glaciers. Loki had woven the same story-magic that kept the wind at bay or kept Thor from feeling it.

It gave Thor an idea. He spoke into a sudden pause in the dull roar of the hall.

“A fair tale, well-told.” Thor lifted his boots to set his feet on the table. “But I’ve heard it before done better.”

Loki shot him a dangerous look and leaned forward. While some of the warriors around him scowled, most tittered, ducking their faces into tankards to hide their gleeful, gleaming eyes. In a competition of storytellers, listeners always won.

A plan was forming in Thor’s head…simple enough for a start, but hadn’t Loki always averred that all plans had to start simple? And he’d already practiced the telling on Sigyn and Balder. He could alter enough of the details to keep them from balking at it and make it anonymous.

“Well, if you fancy yourself quite so clever, tell us a tale we’ve never heard.” Loki challenged.

Thor swallowed. None of the rest of them could possibly know this, no one knew this but Thor…that the expression on Loki’s face had been a flash of genuine curiosity. And curiosity was the hook to catch a Loki.

“Gladly. I have a story to make your blood hot. Battles, quests and great cunning. Love and madness.” Thor started, pitching his voice to carry. “Listen well! This is not an oft-told tale and this song has gone long unsung.”

****

He held them rapt for a fair few hours. He had to speak very slowly and carefully because obviously he couldn’t risk growing hoarse and being offered a drink. Many of the younger warriors would have been inclined to be restless, but for the fact that Loki watched Thor as though hypnotized, neither moving nor responding to any of the sallies and witticisms cast his way.

Thor finished with the wedding and a rather salacious hint of a honeymoon just as the sky started to lighten. More of the lads were awake than Thor had dared hope, their eyes turned inward and dreamy. They were not accustomed to romances and they seemed to find it as filling as rich food.

Loki locked eyes with him for a long moment and then grudgingly rapped his knuckles on the board, setting off a chorus of acclaim down the hall.

“Well done, nameless. But I must level the same criticism at you. It’s a lively tale, but I’ve heard it before.” Loki leaned back. “And you’ve told it all wrong.”

“Dragons.” Egil One-Hand nodded appreciatively. “A rich gift for a warrior princess.”

 “From the wrong perspective entirely.” Loki continued, shaking his head. “Truly, shouldn’t we hear of the suitor, not the princess?”

“A touch mad, wasn’t he?” Frithiof grimaced. “Who tries to steal from Ran?”

Loki turned a sharp look on his lieutenant. “It was hardly _mad_. It was a _calculated risk_.”

The high table went momentarily silent. Frithiof shrank into his tankard, trying to shrug off his chagrin.

“I liked the part with the dwarves.” One of the Eriks asserted, hiccupping softly. “She spoke fair, that shield-maid.”

“Yes, exactly.” Loki flicked the air with his fingertips. “You missed out the earlier bit when the dwarves took the prince hostage and bound him down under the earth with a hideous serpent standing watch over him and the only door in and out was under the embers of their forge! He was shackled so tightly, they even worked chains through his hair. A most daring escape and it might as well not have happened to hear you tell it!”  

“Hmmphf.” Thor tried to keep the avid light out of his eyes and appear wholly indifferent. “I’ll allow that there may be other versions. Perhaps this eve you might deign to tell the tale your way.”

Loki narrowed his eyes at him as if he sensed some trick, even as the din rose around him begging him to assent. “Perhaps I shall.”

Thor nodded once and hid his grin behind the empty chalice.

****

“Balder.” Thor said grimly. “You need to find out what games Ragnar likes to play and what he likes to wager on.”

“Do I dare ask why?” Balder stood up, sighing. They had shared a few discreet bites of apple after a particularly trying afternoon. The day’s battle had raged exceptionally fierce, one of the Midgard troop had been crushed by a troll and now they were all aching and short-tempered. Mead in sufficient quantities made the rest of the hall slightly more merry.

“The alternative is that I go spit in his face and call him _níðingr_.” Thor scowled. “He challenges me in _holmgáng_ and then what do you think will happen?”

“Maybe he’ll slay you. You look awfully tired.” Balder rolled his eyes and slunk down to the hall.  Thor dozed, half-leaning against the wall until he returned. “Ragnar’s pretty decent at knucklebones and he’s reckoned to be the best at knife-throwing.”

“Oh.” Thor stood up. “Good.”

“What’s this about?” Balder looked apprehensive as he trailed in Thor’s wake.

“Never you mind.” Thor laced his fingers together and stretched them. He’d ever been rather talented at knucklebones, he had big, broad hands but they were quick. He managed to carve out a place at the gaming table by engaging Asmund in a conversation about axes. He toyed with one of the stray bones until Ragnar sharply asked if he was just planning to take up space.

“Oh, I guess I could throw a few. Horses in the stable?” He offered Ragnar carelessly. That was well the hardest style of play.

“Eggs in the basket.” Ragnar narrowed his gaze and looked cagey. Thor grinned inwardly and played a few rounds in a broad and clumsy style, crowing when he won and shrugging when he lost. Ragnar smirked and greedily suggested wagering a few trifles. Thor rebuffed him and played a time or two with Skeggi as Egil One-hand looked on enviously.

After a few bogus sips of mead, Thor pretended to consider Ragnar’s wager for a golden dagger against his armor. “Hmmmm. I’m not ready to go quite so high. How about my cloak?” He fingered the edge of Frigga’s finest woolen work.

Ragnar still looked covetous, but sly. “I guess I might. Maybe you’ll grow less faint-hearted later. But I don’t have anything quite so worthless…”

“Huh.” Thor tapped his collarbone. “How about that trinket? The claw pendant you wear? What is that from, a bilgesnipe?”

Ragnar balked and cupped a hand over the hollow of his throat. “The commander gave it me.”

“Oh, really?” Thor shook the bones in his hand so their clicking sounded like wicked laughter.

****

“I had thought you too great a warrior to battle over trinkets, nameless one.” Loki mocked from the end of the gallery.

“Hardly a battle.” Thor stopped and waited for him to approach. “Has he come sniveling to you?”

Loki arched an eyebrow. “No, he daren’t. But I notice things.”

“I daresay you do.” Thor shut his teeth with a click.

“You’re an odd one to be sure, nameless.” Loki cocked his head. “You won the game but it appears to have vexed you mightily.”

“The commander of the Einherjar should not have favorites.” Thor said stiffly.

Loki chuckled. “I think you would not think thus, were you the favorite”

Thor growled, even though that was probably the truth.

“Much as I like to have you vying for my favor.” Loki stepped closer. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have such an obvious token.”

Loki darted a hand up to snatch at the thong around Thor’s neck and Thor grabbed his wrist and jerked it back to his side. He was suddenly almost sick with rage and it was all he could do not to heft Loki over his head and fling him to the floor.

But Loki had almost recoiled himself. Loki paused and reached more gently with his free hand. Thor let him tug both pendant bilgesnipe claws out from under his hauberk. Loki blinked at the twin thongs and then he pulled back, his eyes gone dark with suspicion. Thor did not move to explain. Loki was clever enough to grasp the significance of what he saw. His mouth worked a moment before he spoke.

“You think that strange story you told is ours, don’t you? This love of yours truly is a many-splendored thing.” Loki’s lips curved into a sneer. “To see you transformed into a maid for me.”

“Loki.” Thor gripped Loki’s wrist ever tighter. “I have done many things, far, far worse for love of you.”

“That hurts.” Loki said flatly, factually.

“Good.” Indeed, if Thor squeezed one whit harder, the bone would snap. He wasn’t sure if that meant anything here, but surely it would be momentarily unpleasant. “Thus you might remember it.”

“I keep thinking that you will recover your wits. But you only grow more foolish.” Loki did not pull at his imprisoned wrist, but he bared all his teeth as Thor pulled him close enough to share air.

“Do you never wonder-when you recite the Skírnismál or the Grípisspá and they all weep like maidens-do you never wonder why _your_ eyes stay dry?” Thor snarled in a whisper. “Do you feel the magic underneath your skin, in the tips of your fingers? Does it ever trouble you that you are more than what you seem?”

“The only thing that troubles me is you, nameless.” Loki hissed.

Thor didn’t even have to see the gleaming flash of silver, it was instinct that led him to grab Loki’s other wrist. He stopped Loki’s blade a finger’s width away from the gap under his breastplate. “No you don’t.”

Loki blinked as Thor jerked his knife away, looking genuinely taken aback. “This usually works.”

“Maybe on people you’ve never stabbed before.” Thor grimaced. “But I am not numbered among that company. You skewered me once, you shall not again.”

Loki bared both his upper and lower teeth looking pale, pinched and _furious_. And uncertain.

“It means nothing.” Loki spat. “Whatever you were in life does not give you license to defy me now.”

Thor opened his mouth to respond hotly, then stopped himself. This was not how he had meant to do this. Locking horns with Loki’s stubbornness was not the way to win him unless Thor wanted to lose another thousand years at it. Going head to head would crack both their skulls, someone needed to give.

 _Humility_ , thought Thor, _don’t argue_.

“Forgive me. I spoke out of turn. I shall no longer.” He knelt gracefully and bowed his head.  “Whatever your will, it is mine too, commander.”

“Yes.” Loki hissed. He clenched a hand cruelly hard over the back of Thor’s neck and shoved him down to a crouch. “You’ll be my fucking dog, if that’s what’s required.”

Abruptly, Loki stopped, jerked his hand back and fell silent. Thor blinked and then realized what Loki must be seeing and his heart started to pound. He knelt even deeper and bowed his head even lower.

Loki’s shocked silence lasted for as long as it took him to pace a complete circle around the kneeling Thor.

“Asgardian, you claim.” Loki sneered. “I think you are a liar for all of that. Asgardians have no scars.”

Thor’s skin tingled under what could only be Loki’s rapt regard.

“Asgardians can have scars…if they refuse healing.” Thor said quietly. “No one ever used a healing stone on that particular wound.”

“It looks like…”Loki snapped off his words and looked away. But his eyes drew back to Thor, almost unwillingly.

“It looks like what it is.” Thor parted the whole mass of his hair slowly, baring the back of his neck to reveal the crescent scar. “From when you bit me. Do you remember?”

He dared a hot glance up at Loki’s sneering mouth.

The memory was bringing his own breath hard now. Loki’s fingernails etched deep in the muscles framing his heart even as Loki’s thumbs gently stroked his nipples. Pleasure and pain always in balance, sting and sweetness, as Loki fucked him so gently with savage snarls, taking his possessive, proprietary mouthful. The half-moon of teeth marks circled the spot where Thor was not-Thor, just a whimpering beast at Loki’s command. The command was always the same and he never had to strain to obey it.

“I never bit you, you odd…creature.” Loki averred, but he did not sound as sure as usual.

“You _often_ bit me.” Thor swallowed and kept his eyes on Loki’s boots. “When you had me. Don’t you remember?  When you would push my face into the furs, make me spread my legs wide, you were ever…”

“Stop.” Loki barked and his breath hitched, like his mouth had gone dry.

“I think you do remember.” Thor sank back on his heels and kept his tingling hands on his knees with a great effort. “Else it should not prick you so. _I remember_. I remember days long past when you were chaste and afraid of how my touch made you weak.”

Loki was looking at him now. His lips turned down but his eyes were unguarded and uncertain.

“But you soon grew bold, Loki.” Thor murmured. “And so greedy. You know it takes a lot to make me ache, but you managed it. Remember how much you like to taste my…”

“Be.” Loki jerked Thor’s chin up hard enough to make his teeth click. “Silent.”

And Thor was left with nothing but wavering shadows as Loki strode away, fast enough to make the torches flicker.

****

Thor didn’t return to the hall, unsure if his face would drive Loki to grim measures. He found a vacant gallery for a catnap. His head ached fiercely and he peeled off a few slices of his last apple. He wondered if it were true, what Balder had observed, was he truly weakening? Growing sluggish and feeble?

At dawn, Loki seemed determined to act as if Thor was just another of his lieutenants and not a particularly well-favored one at that. He was deep in conference with his cadre of scouts as Thor took his position with the twins and Björn Twice-Killed. Balder grinned at Thor faintly from his spot behind the van.

While some received only a curt command and others more detailed instructions, Loki had a word for everyone. They never looked confused, even if his orders occasionally seemed counterintuitive. They all squared their shoulders and fingered their weapons, looking at once grim and eager.

He paused in front of Thor’s company last as they were, yet again, rear-guard. “Word is there comes a demon horde that can move like whirlwinds. I anticipate that they might try to get around us, so keep your chins up and look alive. There are more trolls today than usual and we are going to need a strong anchor if we are to break through.”

They nodded gravely and Björn gave his axes a spin.

“Not going to tax you too deeply I trust?” Loki seemed to think that he was not going to even deign to look at Thor, but then he could not seem to resist one quick glance at Thor’s humbly bowed head. “You’ll have our back, won’t you nameless?”

“Oh, I’ve got your back.” Thor tilted his face up and gave Loki a discreet playful wink. “And your front.”

Loki snorted, but did not quite scowl as he turned away. Sigurd started drumming the flat of his sword against his shield as the brutal horde swept across the plain. The rumbling din of the monster army grew to a roar and Loki’s lips peeled back off his teeth as he raised his sword.

****

Thor slammed into yet another troop of demons, wielding Mjölnir and the mace Björn had tossed him earlier. They had skin as dense as rocks and he was loath to risk his sword. The very weather had turned against them today. A light mist had descended and clung to the ground obscuring the violent clashes of men and monsters. The only advantage seemed that it kept the winged beasties at bay.

Thor paused as he buried a gibbering brute under a blow, looking for Loki as the fog cleared for a moment. All their formations were rent asunder; he and Helgi had worked their way almost into the thick of things. He caught sight of Loki standing alone on a stony outcrop. Loki was smiling at something and Thor craned his neck to see.

A giant green-skinned troll had pulled itself out of the heaving, writhing earth and it was stamping about in confusion, seeming to kill more of its massed monstrous brethren than the scattered fury of Einherjar. Loki cocked his head at it as he walked through the four score lesser demons that Thor and Helgi were in the midst of slaughtering. Loki slowly drew his sword, looking at the troll almost dreamily.

“You leave that one to me, sir.” Thor grunted as politely as he could manage. “He’ll knock you flying.”

“You leave off with this ‘sir’ nonsense, nameless.” Loki sniffed. “And here I do as I please.”

He swanned off in a trollward direction, leaving Thor and Helgi to manage the fiendish plague. Nettled, Thor called after him. “Not like that’s different from **_any other_** moment in time, you…gormless…twat!”

“Did you just call the Uncommonly Vicious a ‘twat’?” Helgi huffed, frowning at Thor sidelong as he raked his mace through a slew of devils. “You know there’s a reason they call him ‘uncommonly vicious’, right?”

“Well I know.” Thor answered grimly. “I was content to call him ‘sir’.”

****

Loki lay on his back, still holding his sword. He’d been flung down so hard that his shoulders had dug into the earth and left a long furrow. When Thor pelted up, Loki just looked up at him and sighed.

“Are you well?” Thor panted.

Loki blew all his breath out. “Save for your intolerable smugness. Your ‘I told you so’.”

“Aha.” Thor dropped Mjölnir. “May we take it as read?” He snapped his fingers. “Intolerable smugness, I-told-you-so. Done.”

He hunkered down in the furrow and started checking Loki for injury.

“Hey…stop it, you.” Loki protested. “I mean it! **Do not** touch me there.” He pointed an accusing finger at Thor. Thor noticed that Loki’s knuckle was scraped to the bleeding point and thoughtlessly pressed his lips to the injured digit.

Loki narrowed his eyes, thought better of whatever he planned to say and contented himself with folding his arms and scowling. “How do we fare then?”

Thor clambered back up to his feet and jumped a little to see over the mounds of dead bodies. “Uh. Setanta and his lot are scything through some of those bull-centaur-scorpion things. Frithiof has the ghost-trolls in retreat with two of the Eriks flanking. It’s almost over.”

“Good.” Loki bit his lower lip and sighed again. “I’m so bored with all of this.”

He caught himself and flashed a guilty green look up at Thor. “You’re the only one I can say that to, nameless. Be discreet.”

“I know.” Since Loki did not seem inclined to heft himself out of his shallow trench, Thor sprawled down beside him, leaning hard on one elbow. “Dull as ditch water.”

“The expression is ‘dull as dishwater’, you overgrown lackwit wretch.” Loki groused. “Do not dare smile at me, I will have the skin off you.”

“I think you exaggerate.” Thor said, grinning harder yet. “If you wanted some quiet time, you had only to say so.” He leaned over and tugged at one of the corpses nearest them--some brutish gnome-thing that was already starting to bloat—until they were invisible from all sides. Shielded in a valley of death. Thor sighed to himself, happily. It was all so familiar; he could almost make believe that nothing had changed.

“I’m going to lure a troll over here with the express purpose of standing on your head.” Loki threatened softly.

“Mmmmm.” Thor pulled his cloak up so it covered the both of them. “After a tiny rest.”

****

“Who gave you this cloak?”

Thor snuffled a little, disoriented after his nap. It felt like someone was tugging gently on a lock of his hair. Of course, Loki hadn’t slept.

“Mother did. She made it.” Thor smacked his lips and blinked half-awake. “Surely you know that, Loki.”

But of course, Loki did not. That had all happened…after. Thor grimaced a little as he sat up, lying so long on cold ground had made him stiff.

Loki had shoved himself up out of the trench. The sky had darkened and the lighted hall glimmered at them from the hilltop. Loki had tilted his head back to look up at the sky and Thor yearned to sling an arm around him and nuzzle his cheek.

 Loki was looking more thoughtful than he had ever yet and Thor felt a prickle of foreboding.

“I notice that my head is still untrod-upon.” Thor ran his fingers through his hair. “What of your troll?”

“Well.” Loki turned and looked him up and down. “There’s always tomorrow.”

****

Thor sighed as he sat down. Yesterday he had been two places away, now only Frithiof sat between them. He could watch Loki’s long fingers as he toyed with his food. A chorus of the younger warriors had just finished singing a couple of bawdy verses when trouble started brewing.

“You haven’t eaten.” Frithiof’s eyes were shiny with drink and he moved a little sloppily. “You never eat.”

“What of it?” Thor tried to keep the words neutral so they could be either taken as a jest or a threat. Balder did his best to look like he hadn’t heard a word and just continued flicking berries at Asmund’s open mouth.

“It is two—three days that you have dined at the high table.” Frithiof counted on his scarred fingers. “But you do not dine. You shame us, Asgardian, why do you not partake?”

“I shame no one—“ Thor started, cupping Mjölnir’s haft. He wondered if it would be best to pre-emptively break Frithiof’s nose.

Ragnar who grew quite as pretty as a maid when the mead had reddened his lips and cheeks interrupted, “Like ttuh-huh commander!”

An uneasy lull in the chatter was quickly filled in by half-a-dozen voices but Thor cut in, “I would beg your meaning, Ragnar?”

“It’s only…” Ragnar had blushed even redder than before when Loki looked at him sidelong. “I remember thinking that was w-why you were so ill-tempered. You d-didn’t eat or drink for over a week when you came here.”

Ragnar looked defensive at their continued silence. “I _remember_.” He took a gulp from his drinking horn.

Thor found himself unconsciously rubbing his breastplate. He imagined Loki sitting as he was sitting now, silent among the chatter, never touching a plate but to move it aside.

“Ill-tempered? Me?” Loki said smoothly and the entire table went momentarily silent. Then Loki laughed aloud and they all breathed again, clinked tankards and jostled for platters. “How foolish, to deny myself this bounty.” He raised a hand to Frithiof. “But it is not for us to dictate to the nameless one. It’s his folly, we shall leave him to it.”

Thor sank into a brood. Loki had been waiting, scheming, hoping for a rescue that was too late in coming. Thor slumped with his chin on his palm. He was too spent. Now he could no longer remember how long he had been abiding here, fighting and maneuvering for Loki’s attention. He chewed his lip as he wondered how much longer he could last.

Loki was telling an old story, one of the ancient Volsung tales to please Sigurd who had gotten his arm slashed nearly off while battling a six-armed goblin. Thor watched as Brunhild re-filled a hefty measure of mead into Sigurd’s mug and stayed to help him drink it. She held the tankard gently and he thanked her in a whisper. They seemed to share a smile and Thor’s heart hitched to watch her rise and move on…for she had no greater love of Sigurd than that of shield brother to sister. The mortals still sang of their passion after a thousand years, but they had forgotten each other in a single sip of mead. And thus until world’s end.

Thor fingered the chalice that sat in front of his laden plate. It was empty, but it could easily be full.

Thor turned and concentrated on Loki’s clear, calm voice to keep from forgetting himself. Loki seemed to note his interest and raised his voice slightly.

“‘I am of the race of the sons of Odin,’ cried Sigurd, his eyes wide and shining with the very light of the sun. ‘I am of the race of the sons of Odin, for my father was Sigmund, and his father was Volsung, and his father was Rerir, and his father was Sigi, who was the son of Odin.’”

“The stranger, leaning on his staff, looked on the youthful Sigurd steadily. It was only one eye that gleamed from his hood but that eye might see through a stone. ‘All thou hast named,’ the stranger said, ‘were as swords of Odin to send men to Valhalla, Odin's hall of heroes. And of all that thou hast named there were none but were chosen by Odin's _valkyrja_ for battles in Gladsheim.’”

“And Sigurd shouted, for he was even in those days of his youth full of arrogance, ‘Too much of what is brave and noble in the world is taken by Odin for his battles in Gladsheim.’”

The hall tittered and chortled as they imagined their beloved, mortal Sigurd rebuking Odin in disguise. Loki continued after a beat.

“The stranger leaned on his staff and his head, was bowed. ‘What wouldst thou?’ he said, and it did not seem to Sigurd that it was to him the old man spoke. ‘What wouldst thou? The leaves wither and fall off Ygdrassil, and the day of Ragnarök comes.’ Then he raised his head and spoke to Sigurd. ‘The time is near,’ he said, ‘When thou might possess thy father’s sword again.  And mayhap shall Odin temper his swords in Valhalla with fire and with ice that they might prevail against all the evil and misery of the realms and that that which is brave and noble may flourish once again.’”

Thor leaned back in his chair. He’d never heard the story told that way before. When Hlökk offered him her jug, he smiled at her and shook his head.

****

Thor hung back as the lowering sun burnished the sky from pink to violet. He nodded to Balder as the rest trooped inside to feast and sing. In the shadow of the hall, it was peaceful and the air was cool. He rubbed a hand over his mouth and beard. Catching sight of his reflection in his doffed helmet made him wince. The hollows of his eyes looked deeper and darker than they’d ever been. Even his armor seemed dull.

The one thing that the great hall was not made to furnish in abundance was moments alone. Thor had not ever craved them before, but now he felt far better by himself. The thunderheads inside him were dire and dour company and they were jealous of his broken love.

He’d fought longer than this before, surely. He couldn’t fathom why he was so weary and desolate.

Thor carefully wiped the ridged faces of Mjölnir where blood was apt to dry, sharpened his blades and then drew out his sword to oil it. Another hour, perhaps two and the light would be completely gone. He would go inside. He would meet Brunhild, hold out his horn and have her fill it. He would offer a toast to the commander as he drank.

A lengthy shadow fell across his foot. Thor glanced up at Loki who seemed to be late returning to the hall as well. Or perhaps he’d come back out, his surcoat and cape were clean and whole. Loki jerked his chin in acknowledgement, but did not speak at once.

He sat beside Thor in companionable silence as the light faded.

“Come to chat with the ravens, have you?” Loki shied a stone that clicked at the claws of one of their constant battlefield companions. It turned one coal-black eye on him but did not deign to move. Loki arched an eyebrow at Thor as if wanting him to share in the outrage of such a cheeky bird. “I often find them better company, myself.”

Thor refused to be drawn; he just kept oiling Mistilsteinn so that it slid easily from the scabbard. _That could be Huginn or Muninn_. Thor didn’t say. _Or **you.**_

“Do you find it odd that such a lovely bird should make such an ugly noise?” Loki mimicked a caw flawlessly.

Thor shrugged. This was uncomfortably close to a painfully sweet memory, so he kept his head down.

“You know this one?” Loki chirped at him, a long string of mellifluous notes.

Thor swallowed. “A thrush?”

“Very good.”

Thor could feel that Loki was smiling at him but he dared not lift his head to look at him. _Please, Loki. Leave me one last corner of my heart._

Loki tapped a tattoo of light fingers on the ground. “How about this one?” He made a sound in between a coo and a whoop.

“A cuckoo.” Thor (unobtrusively he hoped) swiped away a momentary lapse of unconcern. It burned his cheek like lye.

“Well done. Now listen closely to this one, it’s hard to tell from the others.” Loki instructed. He shaped his lips around a curious caw, watching Thor sidelong.

Thor cleared his throat. Twice. “That’s a…magpie.”

“Indeed.” Loki almost purred. It seemed that he sat for a while, watching Thor’s bowed head. “How about this one?”

“You think you’re so clever, _magpie_.” It was his own voice, perfect in every note and timbre from Loki’s mouth.

Thor raised his head very, very slowly.  Loki was smiling at him but there was an apprehension in the back of his eyes that Thor hadn’t seen for centuries.

“Now that is a rare bird indeed.” Loki shrugged his long wash of hair over his shoulder. “Good hunting, good eating though--when you can find it.” He leaned in to whisper. “The mighty Thor.”

He couldn’t quite see anymore. He was blind, he could only hear Loki’s voice and smell the oil and mud and hideous stench of the battlefield.

“Oh my days, you’d think you were made of sugar the way you…dissolve.” But Loki hitched himself closer and stroked a cool hand over Thor’s hot damp cheek, firmly swiping away his tears.

Thor couldn’t _breathe_ anymore; his face was burning. “How…how long?”

“How long have I known…what I’ve always known?” Loki’s half-grin was sad. “How long have I forgotten? Too long, I think.”

Whatever he was holding it had snapped in his hand, broken into brittle shards that sliced his fingers. The cuts burned with blood, sweat and tears as his head grew too heavy for his neck. Loki sighed gently and did not protest when Thor slumped into his shoulder.

“Please…you will do yourself an injury.” Loki pulled the remains of the sword away from him and Thor sobbed like a child.

****

“How did you…why did you…what did I do that was right?” Thor gulped. Loki had stroked his hair as he soaked Loki’s knees with tears and then even kissed his forehead, his eyelids and upper lip. Thor was almost exhausted with joy. He forced himself to sit up and look deep into Loki’s eyes. It was the first time in what felt like forever that the very sight of Loki hadn’t caused him pain.

Loki held his gaze then grinned wryly.

He reached around to finger the edge of Thor’s cloak. “Did you know this was a language?”

Thor frowned and pulled it free of the fastenings under his pauldrons. “The embroidery?”

Now that he looked closer, he could see that what he’d taken for a stylized pattern was actually runic script. It was so small and set in such neat counterpoint to the whorls of contrasting thread that it would not have been apparent to anyone who just glanced at him.

“Yes, it’s a rather obscure and ancient tongue that only a few brave souls have troubled to learn.” Loki pointed at the seam that began under the curve of the hood. “And it starts here: I am Frigga, queen regent of Asgard. Seeress, weaver, wife to Odin and mother of Thor.”

Thor felt a sudden rush of awe and throat-tightening love for his wily, ingenious mother. He examined the wool closely, but it remained impenetrable. “What does she write? Or…sew?”

“The most extraordinary story about how her son, the storm bringer, forged a lasting peace with the greatest of their enemies by batting his eyelashes at the most cunning son of Jötunheim and taking him as consort.”

“She did not say anything about my eyelashes.” Thor was moved to assert.

“Well, obviously, I’m paraphrasing.” Loki shrugged. “It had bothered me for a while, that I was never able to glean more than a sentence at a time. But the other day while you were snoring away in that pile of corpses.” Loki looked reproachful. “I had time to read the whole thing. It would take a lady as clever and far-seeing as Frigga to realize that you might need someone to…corroborate your story, as it were.”

Thor shivered and wondered how tightly he could embrace his mother before she protested. He practiced on Loki who took a fair bit of squeezing before pulling away.

“Then I bit Ragnar.” Loki said coolly, raising one eyebrow.

Thor jiggled his head, unsure of what the correct response was. “He’s surely quite…toothsome.”

“He is, is he not? So juicy.” Loki licked the edges of his teeth. “Since I had to see the marks for myself.”  

 _And match them to yours_. Thor felt the back of his neck tingle and resisted the urge to clutch a hand over his crescent scar.

Loki smirked wryly. “He was not best pleased, but they allow for the fact that I’m a bit strange.”

“And uncommonly vicious.” Thor said softly and Loki grinned.

“Though I suppose I could be a good deal stranger yet.” Loki folded his arms. “Considering I’m a shape-shifting, seiðmaðr frost giant.”

“But that doesn’t matter.” Thor shook his head firmly.

“No.” Loki agreed. He unclenched one of his fists and looked down at his pale palm. “Apparently, it doesn’t.”

“So.” Loki stopped woolgathering abruptly. “While your story was ridiculous in every particular, I was forced to entertain the vague possibility that it might be true.”

“Generous of you.” Thor returned dryly.

“Indeed.” Loki reached over to tweak his nose. “Then also…it _felt_ true. I was always having the feeling that I knew you from somewhere.”

Thor impulsively wrapped his arms under Loki’s shoulders and clutched him. Loki allowed it for a moment and then shrugged free.

“And then I simply…” Loki tilted his head back and stood looking at the enormous edifice of Valhalla. “I was watching the sun rise and I thought _where’s Thor?”_

“I was…I almost…” Thor confessed, flushing hot with shame to think how close he’d come to giving up.

But Loki smiled again, quicksilver, and pressed his fingers to Thor’s lips to stop his admission. “I am not one to task you for desperation. I was so angry when I found myself here that I thought I would burst into flame. The irony was not lost on me.”

“I considered opening the Bifrost on Muspelheim.” Thor admitted. “When I thought you dead.”

“Did you mourn?” Loki arched an eyebrow as if he were simply curious.

Thor rubbed his temple, shaking his head. “We all did.”

“Hmmmpf. In my memory, Thor Odinson was not much of a liar.” Loki snorted. “And I know that is not true.”

Thor sighed. “I think I mourned enough for well half of Asgard. Frigga wept so long, it soaked your hair. Tyr cursed a blue streak. Volstagg skipped two meals. Fandral could not muster even the blackest witticism. Sif almost shed a tear. And Hogun became very grim indeed.”

Loki chuckled, so Thor was emboldened to continue. “Vafthrudnir and Helblindi drank with me until dawn’s light.”

Loki turned his head sharply at his foster father’s name.

“Laufey said he didn’t care, but I think he was lying.” Thor shifted his weight. “Hel has definitely felt your lack.”

“You ventured to Jötunheim. And Niflheim.” Loki said slowly. “You forsook Asgard. For me.”

“Loki, do you still doubt?” Thor pressed his hands to his forehead. “I have come to you through the bones of the earth, through fire, through air, through water. I have been stripped of everything that I ever had or was, until all that remains is my love of you, Loki. That is all I have anymore.”

Loki sighed into his cheek and Thor closed his eyes as Loki murmured. “Is it sufficient, do you reckon? To sustain you until we are summoned? For if there was a way to sneak, storm or sally back to Asgard, I would have found it.”

“Heid made me a…” Thor fished around under the side of his breastplate where he’d taken to stowing his enchanted horn so that no one could find it and sound it prematurely. “If I blow this, she can work her magic to bring us back.”

He wanted to sound it at once, to grab Loki and vanish. But he knew now the perils of leaping without looking. Loki was watching him with an unreadable expression.

 “I rule in heaven.” Loki said softly. “And you want me to come back with you?”

Thor swallowed and bowed his head. “Yes. Please. I’m selfish.”

Loki turned and took two steps out to look down over the smoking field. His face was bare of anything resembling an emotion. He might have been one of the mosaics, the statues from the grand hall.

“Or, if you will, Loki, I’ll drink. I’ll eat something.” Thor called out to him desperately. “I’ll be glad to be one of your heedless, lovesick thralls because it’s not like that would be different at all…”

“Hush.” Loki was in front of him again. “You know I only hesitate for the pleasure of your assurances. I’m selfish too. And wretchedly sentimental.” And Loki kissed him savagely, jerking his braids and gnawing at him until Thor’s mouth tasted of blood.

Thor kissed him back rapturously, losing himself in the scent of Loki’s hair, growing pliant under Loki’s hard press.

“Sif?” Loki broke off and pulled back.

Thor blinked, dazed. He was about to protest when he was drawn to follow Loki’s sharp-eyed gaze.

Sif looked dazed herself; she was gazing up at the massive piles of corpses in awe. She trudged up wide-eyed through the remains of slaughter. She had not bothered to sheathe her short sword and still held her halberd at the ready. Thor realized that the light at their back left them in silhouette.

“Sif!” He called jubilantly and she was running to them, they were pelting toward her.

She dropped her weapons for his embrace. “Thor!” She stroked hands over his face in wonder. “Loki!” She pressed their foreheads together tightly and tugged on Loki’s hair, pinching him as if to reassure herself that he was real. Her eyes shone when she raised her face again. “By Ymir, it is a precious balm to see you both again.”

“Sif.” Thor squeezed her again, more gently. “Did you lose heart? At the very moment of our triumphant return?”

“No, Thor.” Loki murmured and a dreadful notion seized him.

“My regret is infinite, my king.” She was shaking her head sadly as she attempted to square her shoulders. “It was either me or Tyr. Perhaps I chose poorly, but Tyr guarded Odin and Frigga and…”

“Guarded from what?” Thor felt his chest swelling, clutching Heid’s horn as he let Sif go. “What are you saying?”

But whatever she would have said was drowned in a sonorous blast of sound that echoed through the battlefield. Thor reflexively reached out for Mjölnir and she flew to his grasp.

Thor looked down at the horn in his hand wonderingly. He had not even pressed it to his lips. But then he realized that the sound was much bigger than the tiny horn could have hoped to create, that it reverberated through the very earth and the multi-hued crystal panes of the hall were rattling.

“So it has come at last.” Loki looked up to where light began to gush through the darkening sky, a cloud funneling into a mighty vortex full of whirling stars. Loki looked up with an expression of fierce, consuming joy. “Ragnarök.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The excerpt from the Volsungsaga is paraphrased from the edition on www.sacred-texts.com


	5. Ash

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This will be more amusing if you are somewhat familiar with what is 'supposed' to happen at Ragnarök.

“Fuck me in the ear.” Heid said, sounding more bewildered than awed. “You actually did it.”

She poked Loki’s spirit in the chest, rather hard from his grimace.

“Good to see you too, Bright One.” Loki pulled a face, deflecting her curious fingers.

Thor shuddered as the dizzying sensation of reality dissolving around him abated. He had been prepared for the rush and pull of the Bifrost, not the giddy inside-out sensation as some ancient magic drew Valhalla into the Golden Realm. The massed multitude of the Einherjar seemed unaffected; their glittering eyes already sought foes.

Heimdall still held his horn in one hand and he leaned heavily on the hilt of his sword with the other. His golden eyes skimmed over Thor and Loki and the battalions of the Chosen, flanked on both sides by fierce _valkyrja._ “I welcome your return, princes.”

Thor swallowed, “My father has awakened?”

“Only now.” Heimdall inclined his head. Thor suddenly realized that they were nowhere near the Bifrost. He could barely make out their surroundings for the smoke, but a harsh wind revealed the remains of the rainbow bridge in the distance. It was now a crystal crag, a broken shard piercing the darkness and leaking light into the void.

“The sons of Muspelheim wished to ensure that we would not abandon this realm.” Heimdall said without inflection.

Thor shook his head in instinctive denial. “How long have we been gone?”

“By our reckoning, it is three years. You look dreadful.” Heid frowned at Thor. “Though I don’t know why I’m surprised.”

Thor couldn’t muster the wit to respond to that with the sarcasm it was due.“Are we overrun?”

“Tyr, Freyr and the remains of your warriors still hold the citadel.” Heimdall intoned. Sif’s shoulders relaxed a bare moment in relief.

Heid shrugged. “Or at least that was true an hour ago when we broke through to summon the Einherjar.”

Thor noticed that her moon-pale face was streaked with charcoal and runnels of sweat. “Lead us to them.”

Heid cocked her head at the gatekeeper dubiously. “I rather think it be worthwhile for me to re-unite Loki with his body? And the Lady Sif?”

“It is still possible?” Loki’s gaze sharpened avidly. “How much of your sei _ð_ have you spent, trying to preserve dead flesh, Heid?”

Heid snorted. “It was this great mage here who uncovered the trick of it. It has cost me not a whit.”

Thor scowled as their eyes turned toward him while Heid explained. Heid finished, “After it held Loki so well, we began putting every corpse we recovered in the care of the river spirit. Which was not very many, but…”

Loki pursed his lips, then turned and made a quick gesture. A dozen newly-slain Asgardian warriors stepped out of their formation and marched forward to cluster behind him.

Heid looked startled, then pleased. “Come with me.”

Loki turned and spoke to the upturned faces of his army. “This warrior is now foremost of my lieutenants and you shall obey only him until my return. Heed him well.”

The Einherjar were too well-honed to murmur, but a small gleaming ripple seemed to pass over their spear points.

“Must you go?” Thor asked low. He had been gripping Mjölnir with both hands to forestall his urge to keep one hand on Loki at all times. In the dim, strange light, Loki looked gray and insubstantial like he could vanish in a mist with the rest of his ghost warriors. “I would join you, but Odin and…”

“I will be stronger when I am whole.” Loki murmured, inclining his head.

“Then you must.” Thor returned grimly. “Return to me as swiftly as you are able.”

“I will.” Loki spared Thor one last glance as Heid spread her small palms in a whirling arc that made the air shimmer. She pressed her hands to Sif and Loki’s chests and they all vanished.

Heimdall’s golden eyes looked oddly molten. Thor regarded the gatekeeper for one moment longer and then slowly turned to face his home with unaccountable dread in his heart. Thor swallowed and gripped Mjölnir all the tighter.

 _Everything_ was on fire.

****

A few of the floating towers had come unmoored and large sections of the outlying settlements had burned completely. A wall of flame ringed the citadel. What had been a stylized moat and fountain was now churning with lava that bubbled sluggishly. Thor had never seen the bridge drawn and the portcullis shut tight and it gave him a moment’s pause. The battalion massed up eagerly but seemed at a loss when Ragnar melted his halberd poking at the coals that kept them out.

“I shall open it from inside, be ready.” Thor said and Sigurd nodded acknowledgment. They pushed in to form a denser mass behind Heimdall’s impassive bulk.

Thor spun Mjölnir and was up and over the wall in a moment. It was then he discovered that the bailey was full of lesser demons, busily scorching the inner fortifications. Thor struck the pulley quickly and the bridge crashed down as the gate creaked open.

The demons quickly drew into a tight pack of sizzling, white-hot menace.

“Surrender, Asgardian.” The fire demon’s burning form shimmered. ““Your blood will not flow fast enough to choke our flame.”

“You will have none of our blood.” Thor growled. He threw himself into the thick of them and swung Mjölnir low, as if he was sweeping a hearthstone. The Einherjar quickly discovered how fast they had to strike their blades to save them melting from the demon’s heat.

As the last demon was slain, an eerie silence descended on the courtyard. There was only the distant roar and crackle of an unchecked fire.

“Frithiof, take your men and go check the stables, see if any mount yet lives.” Thor ordered, gesturing eastward. “Sigurd, you hold here, close the gate but be ready for a quick retreat. Heimdall, Balder, you and the Eriks, come with me.”

They raced up the broad staircase into the palace proper. Thor tried to keep his eyes forward and not focus on the smoking horizons of the Realm Eternal lest horror overcome him.

As he ran across the hall that led to his parents’ chambers, he had to duck a broad blade when Tyr broke from the shadows swinging furiously. Tyr drew himself up short so fast that he nearly lost his footing and he goggled openly at Thor.

“Thor-king…my prince.” Tyr wheezed sounding both exhausted and relieved. He bowed in a swift obeisance and then poked Thor, much as Heid had done Loki. Thor bore it with a wince.  Tyr jerked a nod at Heimdall and cast suspicious looks down each of the hallways. “We hold these quarters yet, but we are spread awfully thin. These foes move swift and quiet.”

“I have brought the Einherjar.” Thor noted that Tyr had several fresh-made burns and slashes that no one had endeavored to heal.

Tyr nodded acknowledgment to the Eriks and Balder. “Our hospitality is a bit strained right now, but welcome to Asgard. And welcome back, my prince.”

“How do we fare then?” Thor asked, steeling himself.

“Oh.” Tyr shrugged and twirled his blade idly. “Been better, I suppose.”

They exchanged a hangman’s grin and Thor felt a sudden battle-hungry joy. They were not yet broken.

“Tyr, you are as steadfast as the sun.” Thor clasped his hands and pressed their foreheads together, trying to pass on strength and regain some of his own. “I can do naught in this hour but thank you for seeing my parents so well-guarded.”

“You can do more than that, Thor.” Tyr grinned. “If you can still swing your mallet, that is. And fresh troops are just what was wanted.”

“My father?” Thor cocked his head to look around Tyr’s bulk.

“The Queen is assisting him.” Tyr explained delicately. “Come and take some food.”

Thor nodded; the process of awakening fully after a prolonged Odinsleep was not to be hurried. And he had a good three years of hunger to abate. Tyr called up new guards and led the way to the anterooms that they were using as dining halls now. A meager meal sat on half-empty tables and a few grimy soldiers picked at it listlessly.

Observing the remains of his warriors jabbed at his vitals more than anything he had yet seen. He barely recognized Volstagg who had shrunk from his usual merry girth to merely portly. Fandral was half-heartedly attempting to comb his ash-streaked hair clean using the reflection of his burnished shield. Freyr slumped with his golden head buried in his arms. Hogun was sharpening his knives, seeming less grim than usual. Or rather, Thor considered, everything else had just grown so very forbidding and gloomy that Hogun the Grim seemed somewhat more cheerful by comparison.

Thor stood at Volstagg’s elbow for three long breaths before they recognized him and fell on him as though _he_ were the feast and they were starving men. Thor thought for a second that they were going to squeeze him into pieces.

“I’ll need that hand, Fandral.” Were the first words he managed to wheeze. “I use it for lots of things.”

Fandral left off kissing and blubbering into Thor’s palm and started unabashedly stroking his hair. “It **is** you.”

Volstagg sniffled and wiped his tears off with his beard.  Hogun couldn’t seem to leave off patting Thor, moving from his shoulder to his cheek. Thor finally managed to shrug free of their collective embrace. “You thought yourselves shed of me? No such luck, I’m afraid.”

Now they stood back and filled their eyes until he was shifting with discomfort. He wondered if he looked as greatly altered as they.

Volstagg thrust a thin roast fowl into his hand. “Eat, eat! My dear prince.”

Thor set to with a will. Balder sat down and started idly fingering the plates until he seemed to realize what he was doing and cast Thor a wry look. He tried chewing on a mutton chop and then left off with an irked expression.

“Tell me all.” Thor ate a small melon, rind and all.  

“We have been hard-pressed latterly.” Volstagg swallowed and something seemed to occur to him as his eyes passed over Heimdall. “My prince, do you come at the head of the Einherjar?”

“I can certainly number myself as one of the Einherjar.” Now that Thor had begun chewing, it was hard to stop. It was unbelievably satisfying to work his jaws again.

“…I am…sorry.” Volstagg appeared to be casting about for words, looking to the others in warning. When Thor flicked his eyes up in a question, Volstagg explained. “That your quest was unsuccessful, my prince.”

Thor drained a tankard of ale and belched. “Why do you assume that my quest was unsuccessful?”

They all exchanged nervous glances and Fandral made a helpless gesture at the blackened sky outside.

“I have returned with our prince Loki and the Lady Sif.” Thor couldn’t help but feel a little glad that at least _he_ had some good news to report. “Heid is joining them to their flesh even now.”

“Sif? Sif lives?” They all seemed to sag into one another like relief had sucked their bones out and Tyr quickly muffled a sound that from another man might have been called a sob. A moment of light seemed to pass over Freyr’s face before his expression darkened once again.

“They returned with me from Valhalla. I had gone thence to bring Loki back.”

“Loki was in _Valhalla_?” The words practically came in a chorus of disbelief from four mouths. Hogun just sheathed his knives and shrugged.

“It is Loki who commands the Einherjar.” One of the Eriks said primly.

Fandral stirred uneasily, shooting Volstagg a nervous glance. “I’m sorry but it sounded like he just said _Loki commands the Einherjar_.”

 “It is so.” Thor found himself chuckling at the incongruity, which he had rarely considered until now. “He made quite the name for himself in the afterworld, before I recalled him to his true being.”

Hogun straightened and the deep furrow in his brow grew marginally deeper.

Thor looked around at all their round-eyed faces. “Why such dismay, my friends?”

“It is only that…” Fandral started hesitantly. “You say you ‘recalled him to his true being’?”

“Indeed.” Thor took another swallow of ale. It did not seem as rich as in days past.

“What being was that?” Volstagg asked in a hollow tone.

Thor felt his glare deepening as he looked around at their carefully-schooled expressions. It was galling to realize that they hadn’t yet managed to abandon their childish prejudices against his consort, after everything.

“It is only…” Fandral bowed his head and then seemed to try another tack. “The fire demons weren’t so hard to manage. Sif had them chasing their blazing tails for years.”

“Have they some new weapon or tactic that has led us to such a dire pass?” Thor could still hear the sound of flames.

“A new ally.” Volstagg had moved to the window and gestured out at the eastern plain.

Thor moved to his side to look out. He was expecting more smoke and slag and bare earth, he was _not_ expecting: “Is that ice?”

 “Indeed.” Volstagg sighed. “Laufey seems to have found the circumstances irresistible, even without their Casket. They invaded ten days ago, swarming like locusts.”

Thor looked askance at Tyr.

“The treasury was sealed, of course. Your mother gave the order.” Tyr said.

Thor nodded. Plans had ever been in place to lock down the treasury’s terrible power under the incorruptible eye of the Destroyer in case of war.

Thor gripped the window frame and Mjölnir’s haft until they both creaked.

“It seems like this could have been mentioned at once.” Thor said finally.

“You would have not taken it awry if we had said, ‘Thor, welcome, well-met, we’re neck deep in frost giants’?” Fandral said so seriously that they all had to grin.

“The Ifingr river.” Thor said slowly. “It’s a way into Jötunheim.”

“Well, apparently.” Fandral sighed. “It’s also a way out.”

****

He had time to find a new sword and see the citadel cleared of fire demons before he was summoned to his father’s chambers. As he crossed the dim room, Thor noticed that his father’s face remained peaceful, as if he still slept. But Frigga was lacing up his aketon and a page was polishing his helmet. Frigga was also helmeted and armored with a short kilt and greaves.  As Odin settled his breastplate, she hefted her spear, balancing its weight adeptly.

Thor paused, looking up at them. He could see in the golden light that suffused them that they had grown old, but they were not frail. They had aged like oak trees with deep, dense roots and expansive leaves. It almost seemed impossible that he was borne of such radiant beings.

Odin’s power was ever manifest even in the smallest things. It only took one glance to know that his father had seen all; every moment of Thor’s arrogance, doubt and weakness had been illuminated in his father’s dreaming eye. It was not hard to kneel at Odin’s feet. The weight of Thor’s transgressions easily drew him to his knees.

“Father, can you forgive me?” Thor dared to clutch at Odin’s cloak. “It is all my doing that has brought us to this pass. I have abandoned all my duty and responsibility and most particularly my honor.”

It seemed like time stretched around them. For one moment, he was a boy again. He was covered in hot shame and pure contrition, ready to do any impossible thing to wipe the frown from his father’s face. He sank down deeper in weariness and disgrace, knowing that Odin could not simply wave his staff and put all aright.

His father’s indrawn breath was loud in the silence.

Odin spoke low. “There was nothing you could have done to prevent the coming of this day, my son. It was ever laid heavy across our paths. We may have very little time left; do not spend it rebuking yourself.”

“I fear for my reason.” Thor confessed. “I am poisoned with remorse and can do little but rage.”

“Rage is warranted.” Odin said crisply. “And that means you are not consumed by despair. You still hope.”

 “Is there any hope?” Thor found he could not quite raise his head, but he squeezed the hem of Odin’s cloak until the tips of his fingers turned white.

“I hoped for your return and it was not in vain.” Frigga pressed her hand to Thor’s brow. “There are yet realms we must protect. Just because we cannot see the sun does not mean it isn’t there.”

“Mother…” He could almost raise his head to look at her.

“Am I to reprove you for loving too much, my son?” Frigga did not smile, but her hands circled his wrists. He could feel the deep strength under her gentle touch.  “Should we survive or not, know ever that I have been pleased with the seeds you have sown.”

He followed Odin and Frigga through the barren halls with their singed tapestries as the Warriors Three fell into step behind him. Tyr and Freyr met them at the last corridor as Odin halted in the balcony overlooking the inner bailey. The ghost-soldiers looked up at him as one, their gray faces interspersed with a precious few of the last living soldiers of the Golden City. They were mounted; apparently a lot of blood had been spilled to keep the stables untouched.  The horses pranced and shied, eager and nervous from the scent of smoke and the weight of dead men.

He thought that Odin would take a moment to speak to the warriors that had been so carefully gleaned for him down the centuries, the millennia. They came to attention under his singular regard as they recognized the god who lay behind their fate. For a moment, all their solemn faces looked oddly identical with the same awe and uncertainty.

Odin gestured east with Gungnir and said simply. “We ride.”

And all their grave gray faces opened in ferocious, predatory joy and they roared to the heavens, loud enough to make the walls shake.

****

It seemed it took only a handful of deep breaths and heartbeats before they cleared the smoking remains of the Golden City and gained the plain. It spread out before them, dotted with bonfires that rose high as great trees and beyond that….

Thor tried not to let his disquiet flow down his legs and infect his horse. She appeared to be quite a sensible beast and he didn’t want to alarm her unduly. But there was a certain point where the smoke lifted revealing that the gray of the horizon was actually blue. He had never seen so many frost giants, even as they had poured down upon him in Jötunheim. He recalled Volstagg’s words: _swarming like locusts._

It was hard not to think of them as a plague as the horde of them, rank on rank stretched as far as his eye could see.

The depredations of the fire demons had left the door open. With the air so stained by smoke, the frost giants could move without being overwhelmed by brightness. Thor knew from his intimate knowledge of Loki’s physiognomy that they weren’t crippled by sunlight, but it did make them deeply uncomfortable.

One of their more fearsome generals, Hrym stood back from a heated debate with a fire demon captain and uncurled himself to his full height. Fire demons and frost giants took in the line of Aesir and Einherjar and Hrym’s face was marred by what might have been a grin.

“So we have finally roused the Bale-worker, the Storm-bringer, the Guardian and the Battle-hungry.” Hrym bowed his head in mock-obeisance at Odin’s court and then saluted the _valkyrja_ ironically. “And the halfthings fight full now. Much good may it do you.”

Odin said nothing and Hrym drew his gaze down the line with a cruel smile.

“Why so glum, laddie?” Hrym arched one brow at Freyr. “You look like you lost your lover. Or maybe your sister. Or perhaps both.”

Freyr flung a spear which Hrym neatly dodged, but it skewered the frost giant who was standing behind him. Hrym snarled in fury as the unfortunate tottered to his knees, gushing dark blood.

And the battle was joined.

****

Thor left his horse to bound into the thick of things, a series of leaps that knocked frost giants off their feet in waves. He found himself plagued by a cadre of lesser fire demons who rushed around him, singing his cape and hair. Thor punched a frost giant and used him as a shield, the giant’s icy grip turning the demons solid enough to smash. When the frost giant shook off his daze, Thor cracked his kneecap with Mjölnir.

Of course, the pressing thing was: frost giants were hard to kill even if you _wanted_ to kill them. And even as they overran and irreparably altered his home, Thor was finding his _berserk_ rage hard to release.  But he could keep the enemy off-balance so that the horde did not overwhelm the thin line of the Einherjar as they advanced. Thor moved in quickly when any cluster of frost giants grew too large, but there were an awful lot of them.

He turned at a shout to see Freyr skewered by a jagged icicle wielded by a dour jötunn. By the time he leaped to Freyr’s aid, Freyr had pushed himself up the length of the frozen sword even as his ribs snapped audibly. Freyr slashed the giant’s throat with Tyr’s diamond dagger and did not wince even as its icy indigo blood splashed his hand and chest. Thor knocked away a giant who was attempting to engage him and pulled Freyr off the ice-shard and laid him on his back.

Freyr was dying but he still managed to mutter. “I’m sorry, Thor.”

“What have you to be sorry for?” Thor knelt over him, trying to wipe away some of the blood and muck off his face.

“It’s going to be a long fight.” Freyr turned his head to the side. His lips were turning gray. “Take the dagger, please.”

Thor took it, numbly.

Freyr’s eyes opened wide and he gripped Thor’s hand hard. “I just want to be with Freya.”

“You will be.” Thor pressed his mouth to his friend’s knuckles. “You will be.”

He hoped it would be so, that the Vanir were destined for a gentler paradise.

Freyr died and Thor felt his lips peeling back from his teeth as he stood to face the oncoming horde. He let them race up to him in a multitude before he slammed Mjölnir to shockwave strength. Once he would have thought twice about subjecting Asgard to his most destructive power but the earth was already scorched and ruined.

He fought on and the Aesir forces gained ground. The Einherjar fought viciously. Since they could not match the size or force of the frost giants, nor the searing, oxygen-stealing guile of the fire demons, they used chains to trip the mighty giants and spinning blades to hypnotize and slash the demons. Balder was exceptional at keeping the fiery foes at bay with his bright blades.

Thor knocked an exceptionally persistent frost giant off its feet and was surprised to be splashed. He noticed suddenly that they were at the edge of the Ifingr, the river that bisected the plain. He was instantly cheered to discover that they’d gained so much ground and then just as quickly apprehensive because… Loki’s continued absence had been slowly swelling in his mind, only blotted out by his instinct for slaughter.

The Einherjar and the Aesir fought their way beside him, pushing the demons and giants to the far side of the river. When it stood between them, they all broke off, panting and glaring at each other.

 Thor felt Odin’s presence by his side and dared a glance over at Heimdall’s golden helm. Then his attention was drawn back to the enemy as Laufey shouldered his way through the crowd to river’s edge. There was a murmur from the Einherjar and a sizzling hiss from the fire demons as Sutr and Sinmara shimmered into view and charred the earth on the far bank.

Thor could not help but grimace in disgust as he looked on Sinmara’s smirking face. It was she who had cast the spell that had seen Loki sundered from life. It was all Thor could do to keep from flinging Mjölnir at her flickering eyes.

They stood for a moment, like opposing chess pieces. Sutr and Sinmara, king and sorceress. Laufey-King who shunned sorcery and Thor. And of course, Odin both king and sorcerer, flanked by Heimdall, the all-seeing guardian.

“You cannot prevail.” Laufey did not even sound as if he were gloating. Thor noticed that Helblindi stood at his father’s shoulder. “We have the numbers to bury you now.”

“Battles do not always lie in numbers.” Odin said calmly.

“SSSSSSSSss but they do ssssss help.” Sutr flashed his ember-bright smile.

“Relinquish Asgard and we may spare Midgard and Alfheim,” Laufey said, coaxing.

Thor almost laughed at the audacity. “If I must slay every one of you, I will, to prevent that end.”

Laufey raised his chin and cast a glance awry. “ _Every_ one of us, Odinson?”

Sinmara hissed and Thor followed her gaze, knowing at once what she saw, even as Ragnar shouted, ‘Commander!’

Loki stood in the middle of the river, letting the water gush around his ankles. He was garbed as if for a wedding feast and Thor was cut at once by the memory of Loki’s funeral clothes, Frigga’s finest craft. He looked beautiful and incongruous amongst the carnage.

Sif and the resurrected soldiers were splashing up the side of the bank to fall in with Tyr and the Warriors Three but Loki did not move. Sinmara seemed suddenly unable to bear it and she flung out her palms and the air throbbed with her spell.

Loki held up a hand almost lazily to ward himself, even as Thor tensed with the rest of the Einherjar. Sinmara gasped and her orange flames turned blue for a moment. All the fire demons seemed to shrink. Certainly if they had not all witnessed Loki’s death, it had swiftly become one of their oft-told boasts.

“It will not be so easy this time.” Loki did not raise his voice but somehow it carried. Sinmara seemed to crouch as her embers went dark red, almost black.

“For whom will you fight sssssss?” Sutr called. “Laufeyssssson?”

Loki tilted his gaze up to the sky and Thor was struck with a sudden icy finger of realization…that this was a question that Loki might actually be pondering.  Thor locked eyes with Helblindi and remembered the painful insight that frost giants saved their eternal vows for vengeance, not allegiance. Thor’s brave words aside, the Aesir were dangerously outnumbered. Without sentimental considerations, might Loki be persuaded to cleave to the strongest?

Thor gripped Mjölnir.

In the silence that followed, Ragnar called again, hesitantly, ‘Commander’?

Abruptly, both sides recoiled from the banks of the river. They all watched in shock as a ship rose from the river’s heart to bob on the ripples and float unmoving.  A black-sailed ship, pinched and listing with a vast menagerie of fearsome chimera who quickly splashed out into the shallow water to fill the space downstream from where Loki stood alone.

Hel sat proudly mounted on her enormous wolf. She regarded both sides of the water with an air of amusement. The light was low enough that her beauty glowed like a pearl. She caught Balder’s eye and grinned.

“Get you gone, witch-queen….this is not your dominion.” Tyr called haughtily.

“Indeed.” Hel said evenly, straightening to survey the smoking, blood-soaked, raven-studded plain. “Are you quite sure?”

“Are you here to save yourself some time, Hel-Queen?” Laufey intoned mockingly.  

“I am here to fight for my father, should he require me.” Hel returned calmly, stroking her wolf’s ruff.

It seemed as though an identical ripple ran through both sides. Sinmara snarled and seemed to flicker before she blasted forth another magic volley. But this time it was not Loki who repelled her.

Heid’s magic flowed gold and it seemed to entwine Sinmara’s craft, turning it in on itself and glowing even hotter. Sinmara tried to force it away and for a moment the orange flame licked out and brushed Heid’s red-gold tresses. Then it seemed to snap back and devour the fire demon sorceress, her own magic and Heid’s both too much for her fiery form to handle. She shrieked and expired in a blazing column that shrank to a black wisp that quickly dispersed and was gone.

Heid turned and trudged back through ankle-deep water to the edge of the river bank and Thor was about to offer her a hand when she stumbled and he grasped that the battle had cost her dearly.  She looked up at him and he knew at once that there were not flames reflected in her eyes, the fire was actually inside her.

“Cousin?” He knelt and reached for her. She shook her head at him with a touch of her usual mockery. She barked out what might have been a laugh and smoke poured from her mouth. Her pale skin seemed to harden, then crack, then shatter to dust. The river soaked up the Bright One before Thor could stand fully upright, slack-jawed in horror.

He glanced at Loki, who did not seem to have noticed. But surely Loki had noticed, Loki was never prone to letting enemies know his heart. Thor huffed a hard breath, trying to contain himself. Heid’s sacrifice shone all the greater in light of her usual cynical ways. The Aesir stood still, but Thor could hear the sound of bones creaking as they gripped their weapons. Hel sighed.

Thor felt it a heavy loss to remove one sorceress from the board. No matter how malevolent Sinmara was he would not reckon it a good bargain. Now only two sorcerers remained.

Laufey roused himself first. “For whom will you fight, my son?”

Thor bared his teeth at that, wanting to heap scorn on Laufey’s sudden remembrance of paternity or maternity or whatever. He wanted to call out to Loki, but he was hesitant of the appearance of manipulation or sentiment. Loki would choose him. He need only wait.

“I would see you, my…” Laufey said a word then that defied the Alltongue. Some jötunn diminutive that Thor had never heard.

Loki cast a narrow gaze up to his erstwhile parent, but the massed ranks of the Einherjar gasped as blue began to seep over his features and his eyes bled to crimson. Loki did not look at his warriors as they murmured at his transformation.

It occurred to Thor that even if the Einherjar now refused to fight for Loki, Loki was consummately aware of all their individual and collective strengths and weaknesses. That thought slipped through his mind as he gnawed on his lip.  

“Will you fight for me, my son?” Laufey asked more pointedly. Sutr flickered nervously, hefting his bright blade.

“Why should I?” Loki asked flatly.

Hrym snarled at him from upriver. “Because it is to our strength that your allegiance is owed, upstart, not to these pale-skinned popinjays.”

Helblindi said quietly but in a voice that carried. “I shall fight with my brother, no matter which side he chooses.”

In the sudden deeper silence, Helblindi lifted his chin. “He has defied death. He has breached the afterlife of the Aesir. He has bent their ghost army to his will. Against him, I will not stand.”

Laufey bared his teeth and Thor felt a sudden tickle of _something_ clutching at him. Odin tightened his grip on Gungnir and turned to look at Thor. The crowd of frost giants was shifting and muttering.

“Will you fight with us, my son?” Laufey repeated, lifting his eyes from Loki to Thor for a moment.

Loki shifted his weight incrementally, casting a glance back at Hel. “You have yet to persuade me why I should. Without your usual inducements.”

The ‘usual inducements’ being Loki’s antipathy for death, Thor surmised. The muttering grew louder.

And the ranks of frost giants opened and…he had been wrong to think that Laufey shunned the darker sorcerous arts, most dangerously wrong. The sight of their grinning faces turned his blood to water or perhaps it was something more sinister entirely. Volstagg exclaimed when Thor dropped to his knees.

“Oh how we have missed you, brave one.” Angrboda crooned.

For the first time, Loki looked up at Thor’s blanched face, a sharp, assessing gaze. He turned back to Jarnsaxa’s bare face and Angrboda’s scarred one. “How are you doing that?’

Thor gulped a mouthful of bile. He looked down at his hands clenching the ground. The veins stood out in a sickening contrast. **_How_** _are you doing that? Not **stop** doing that?_

Tyr swore under his breath and Sif made a small cut-off sound but the line of the Aesir held without a flinch. In some faint part of himself, the part not given over to this bewitched infirmity, Thor was proud.

“Your Aesir dog came begging us to loose you from the lightless ones.” Jarnsaxa gloated.

“He was quite desperate.” Angrboda clucked, in mock reproof.

“How could we resist a little spell or two?” Jarnsaxa grinned, wolf-like. “With him most willing to do _anything_ to free you _._ ”

Loki blinked once. His face stayed blank, but for its proud scars.

“You have surpassed even my wildest imaginings, Loki.” Laufey’s voice rasped along Thor’s straining nerves like a dull blade. “I have wronged you most grievously.”

Thor gasped a sobbing breath. That surely must be Loki’s siren song.

Odin straightened and Angrboda’s voice cut the air like a whip. “If you don’t want the Storm-bringer’s blood poured out like festival ale, I wouldn’t, One-eye.”

At that, Thor tried to rise. But all strength and hope felt like they were leaking out of him down into the blood-soaked earth of his home.

“You make an interesting case.” Loki tilted his chin up and Thor’s heart skipped a beat.

Down the line of the riverbank, all the Aesir and Einherjar seemed to turn to stone.

“They are so proud, are they not? All that pride will be yours to toy with. All that strength shall be your plaything.” Jarnsaxa grinned fearsomely.

“We need not slay your favorites.” Angrboda assured Loki. Thor managed to force out a grunt at that. He could easily imagine himself enslaved, gladly if it would spare others…but Sif? Tyr, Frigga, Odin? His proud warriors? It did not bear thinking about.

Loki turned to face his tribe, turning his back on the Aesir. “What will you require for my parole?”

“Blood-tithe, as ever.” Laufey simpered.  “But not the Hammer or One-eye. One I fancy you would keep, and I would keep the other. My gifts to you.”

Thor could only see Loki’s face in profile. Loki had set his teeth edge to edge in a sneer. Thor wondered whose blood Loki would demand.

“I will fight you, Loki Laufeyson.” Heimdall’s deep, quiet voice rang over the river. “If that should suffice.”

The horror of the Aesir as Heimdall stepped down to the river matched the mute voracity of the jötnar and made the fire demons hiss with excitement.

It was Laufey himself who formed a wicked ice-blade which he handed off to Loki with great ceremony. Loki took it and gazed clear-eyed at Heimdall’s impassive face as they stood across their watery dueling ground. Thor suddenly understood the hunger and purpose of the frost giants. They knew, surely, that sacrifice magic was the strongest and the best sacrifice of all was a god.

Loki and Heimdall circled each other for a long moment and Thor tried to keep breathing and hold onto some vain semblance of hope. He tried to ape some of his father’s composure even as his world narrowed to the flash of swords and the paralyzing weakness that gripped him.

Hel had contended that magic required more belief and pain than skill. Thor had one incantation that he could yet speak. He murmured to his clutching hands in full confidence that Loki could hear him.

“Loki,” Thor gasped. “Do you remember the exact moment of your death?”

Loki’s voice tickled his ear. “You asked me if I were jesting.”

“Yes.” Thor tried to speak calmly, even as the sorcerous infection thinned his blood. He thrust himself fully back into the painful memory, the scarlet slash of Loki’s mouth, his white face and Thor shaking him, demanding that Loki cease his tasteless joke _at once._ “I am so sorry. It has plagued me so long, the memory. Please forgive me. The agony made me foolish.”

“That is all you wish to say to me.” Loki did not inflect it as a question.

“Yes.” Thor breathed. “The rest I have already said.”

Loki did not turn at look at him. Loki made a showy pass at Heimdall’s left side which was showily parried. With an immense force of will, Thor jerked his head up to look at the mob of frost giants, held rapt by the spectacle.

At once, he knew just what Loki had planned. He dug his fingernails into the ridges in Mjölnir’s haft. He had to be ready.

Thor did not see how but Loki had drawn first blood. The guardian’s golden eyes remained expressionless, but on his cheek, blood pearled like a tear.

“It pleases you, father?” Loki called, ducking what would have been a fatal strike.

“You have grown in your exile.” Laufey only had eyes for Loki. “I shall lavish such gifts upon you, my...”

Loki cut his eyes sideways and grinned at Thor. He did not duck Heimdall’s next blow and Laufey leaned forward as Thor thought _will they ever not fall for that?_

Four Lokis sprang to life as the one dueling Heimdall vanished. Heimdall slid smoothly into a defensive posture as if it were choreographed.

“You have reckoned me so ill all of you.” One of the Lokis thrust a dagger deep into Hrym’s belly until it burst through his back. “To speak so of _gifts._ ”

“You will _give me_ naught that I may simply take.” Another Loki snarled, slashing his father’s face from brow bone to jawbone as he flung a blast of magic at Sutr with his free hand.

“And why should I take that which is mine already?” One of the Lokis…Thor imagined it might be the real one…stroked a finger down Thor’s cheek and snapped ‘get down’ at Odin. He stood and made a gesture at the Einherjar which had them all falling on their faces.

The last Loki stood weaponless before the sorcerers. Angrboda stepped back and Loki twisted his fingers in a pulling, teasing gesture that made Angrboda stop and muffle a yelp. The rest of the frost giants stood motionless as if they were the ones bespelled. Laufey cupped a handful of indigo blood.

“I have prevailed over death itself.” Loki shook his head. “Your fantasies of empire bore me. You who cannot make our home thrive for all your claims of power.”

Loki paused and looked around. The other doubles vanished.

“Mark those two, my daughter.” Loki said gently. Hel grinned and spread her bony fingers to trace the air, singling out the two frost giants.

“You think to threaten us with death?” Angrboda started contemptuously. “We who have conquer-“

“Hardly.” Loki interrupted and smiled at Angrboda and Jarnsaxa. “I give you my most solemn vow that you shall **not** die this day. Should the Yggdrasil burn to cinders, **you** shall live until I tire of my vengeance.”

Jarnsaxa snarled at him and his hands seemed to boil with blue light and flame. Loki snarled back and his own hands opened and his palms gushed a black nothingness, a dark void that seemed to both ooze and shimmer as it consumed Jarnsaxa’s icy light. Thor wrenched his chin down with the last of his will. He sensed that nothing good could come of looking directly at this battle. There was a sickly, straining, guttural noise and suddenly Thor’s strength flowed back into his veins. He surged to his feet and Loki glanced back over his shoulder.

Loki spread his palms again releasing a huge white cloud, while Thor raised Mjölnir to his fullest height. They had never done this before, there had never yet been a battle that warranted it. The lightning sang overhead and blazed through the heart of Loki’s white phosphorus and the air became fire.

****

Thus the battle was joined again, more brutal than any Thor had ever besought. Legions of frost giants, Aesir, ghost-soldiers, fire demons and Hel’s chimera fought in the perpetual dusk. It was long days before Thor’s newfound fervor began to flag. Even as frost giants tore free to join Helblindi and Loki, there were simply too many of them.

They raged back and forth over the river banks. Thor was rousting what might have been his two-thousandth fire demon when a terrible cry from Frigga jerked his head around.

Thor presumed his tired eyes were playing tricks on him. Because what he was seeing could not be happening, his father, Odin **Allfather** , lay prone and bleeding. Thor flung Mjölnir and raced to his father’s side, thinking _no._

He could see at once that the wound was calamitous. When he rolled Odin over he saw the glistening pomegranate sheen of entrails and he had to stop himself from clutching Odin wretchedly hard. He forced himself to be gentle as Odin gasped at him.

“You will triumph, Thor-King.” Odin’s mouth was spilling red. Frigga fell to her knees and a frost giant would have walloped off her head, but for Hel’s Fenris, who snarled and crouched and flew at the opportunistic giant. Thor called Mjölnir back to his side. Sif and Fandral flanked the wolf to keep enemies at bay.

Odin fumbled for Loki’s hand. Loki was chanting under his breath, having slid to his knees beside them, but Odin squeezed his bloody hand and whispered over Loki’s healing spell, “Live the life you make.” And those were surely words to resonate in Loki's heart, a blessing for one who expected naught but curses.

Loki stilled and swallowed. Something had wounded him; his lips were cut and bleeding. He glanced at Thor as the Hanged God breathed his last. Beside him Gungnir crumbled to dust.

Thor and Loki looked up as their foes closed in. Laufey regarded Odin’s remains avidly as if he had been the one to strike the killing blow.

It seemed bitter indeed that Laufey still lived. Thor had been raised to think that a frost giant corpse had formed the core of all the realms he knew, but it still rankled, this infernal robustness. But something to the north was making the usually-silent frost giants bellow and screech and run. Thor wondered if it were some new tactic they were attempting.

“There is nothing more to avail yourself.” Laufey sneered at Loki. “If you would cast your lot in with these arrogant fools, so be it. You will die with them and I shall think on you no longer.”

“You havvvvve run out of friendsssss.” Sutr’s flames seemed to be widening, he seemed to be swelling with malice.

“No.” Loki smiled even as dark indigo blood dripped from his lips. “There is one here yet who loves me.” Thor grinned and tightened his grip on Mjölnir.

Loki spread his arms as if to compass the length of the plain but no magic crackled or smoked from his palms or fingertips. He bowed his head and his expression was strangely serene. Thor was afraid for one moment; it looked like Loki was offering himself up to fate, to the sorcery of the fire demons and the jötnar but then Thor heard him murmur a single word.

“Sigyn.” Loki closed his eyes. “Sigyn.”

For one moment, the earth went quiet. Then came a rush, a roar and the light behind them turned silver and shining as the river spirit surged up to the sky. Loki tilted his face up and a thick, glittering wall of water rose behind him. When Loki opened his eyes, the wave crashed down.

****

_One_

_Cannot breathe_. It was hard not to struggle. _Cannot see_. The maelstrom had engulfed him.

_Two_

Gasping, Thor burst to the surface to find water stretching to every horizon. His armor bound him tight but he could not move to free himself from it as vicious currents buffeted him from all sides. He was so exhausted now he could barely lift Mjölnir free of the waves that kept trying to bury him. The taste of salt water made him want to retch. He tried to relax into a buoyant float, but eddies and whitecaps battered him mercilessly.

_Three_

He could see something in the distance…pale white and blue in a sea of silver-green. A wave bore him up and he realized what he was seeing. He chuckled and began to swim for the ice floe that Helblindi and Loki were rapidly forming, the water under their hands turning solid and thick. Loki still had an arm around Frigga as his narrowed eyes scanned the waves. Heimdall had reached the edge and he hauled a dripping Volstagg up before reaching back to pull Sif onto the makeshift raft. Another frost giant had joined Helblindi and the floe became an island.

_Four_

It was hard to gain any distance, swimming one-handed. Somehow he couldn’t manage to lace Mjölnir into her usual place at his belt. He’d never felt weariness quite like this before. The chill of the water seemed to be growing. For the first time, he wondered if the distance might be too much for him. He wondered at _himself_ : how he’d foolishly believed that his strength would never fail. He’d never truly tested his limits. His strength was vast surely, but it was not infinite.

_Five_

Loki had noticed him now and was watching his progress avidly. Loki paid no attention to the few who managed to gain the relatively solid ground of his iceberg, clambering awkwardly about the frozen floe and shivering. The current seemed to be drifting them to the far horizon faster than Thor could keep up. Thor twisted and started to swim with all his strength, fighting the currents and his own sick, empty dizziness. Loki was looking at him across the rough sea, murmuring something to himself, some spell or incantation.

_Six_

Another wave splashed over his head and he spluttered and raised Mjölnir once again, but he could not spin her in time enough to lift him from the weight of the water. It was difficult to find the right leverage, the right angle without sinking beneath the surface and every dunking seemed to leech away a little more strength. _Destruction_ , Thor thought in Loki’s voice, _lies at the end of all paths._ He had never anticipated that he would find his greatest foe in an unforgiving sea, but it was somehow appropriate. Surely there was no warrior birthed who could slay the mighty Thor. If he were to succumb, it might as well be to something elemental.

_Seven_

Loki had realized that something was wrong. Thor couldn’t see very well, but Heimdall’s long arms were wrapped around Loki’s lean form and Thor could see flashes of magic, the white of Loki’s teeth as he shouted and cursed and fought, but he could not hear the sound of Loki’s imprecations and pleas. Loki had been weakened as Thor had in the final battle. Thor’s sorrow did not give him any extra strength, if anything it was a drag anchor. Thor watched the dark slash of Loki’s open mouth as he went under again, full in the knowledge that he could be weakened, he could be slain. That he could evanesce, he could sink like a stone and be erased from the minds and memories of all. And it would not matter.

_Eight_

Peace filled him, even as his lungs seemed to catch fire. All would be well, should he be washed up on some foreign shore or drowned in the depths. He had found Loki, once, twice, he could do it again. He would fight again, on some other plane, in some other time. Loki always averred that there was no _never_ , there was no _always_. The lord of chaos had been trying to teach him this for a millennium. Thor stopped struggling and allowed the water to grasp him utterly, to pull him down in the dark and chill.

He let Mjölnir go as he sank into the darkness. He would need little for the next part of his journey; he would take nothing but himself and the memory of his love. It was peaceful in this dark and quiet, untroubled.

Yet he had the vague sense that he was forgetting something.

_Nine_

Long talons scored his neck as some dread beast clawed into his shoulder and his hip. A mighty tug pulled him up, up, up to the light and the air. The salt blistered his wounds, the light stung his eyes and he gasped a half measure of water in with his first breath. He was aloft in a cage of hard sinew and bone.

Jormundgandr beat her great wings once and shrieked triumphantly as she glided over the endless sea.

“Oh, girl.” Thor rasped weakly. “You are…” and knew no more.

 

 

 

****

He dreamed of the northern lights. In his mind’s eye, the sky undulated above him in a kaleidoscope of green and indigo. The scent of snow tickled his nose.

****

The ceiling was rough-hewn timber, thatched with reeds. He blinked. His mother was humming to herself as she plied a needle in the chair next to where he lay. The sun was shining and it felt like he had slept for a long time. He tried to speak to her but it felt like the breath in his lungs was too heavy to force out. A deep lassitude lay over him like a blanket.

“Rest, my dear heart.” Frigga’s words seemed to come from a long way away. “All is well.”

****

They came in dreams, their voices meandered and joined in a chorus over his head. Volstagg sang a bawdy tune in the soft voice of a father crooning a lullaby. Fandral caught someone up on all his varied seductions and liaisons. Hogun just sat, his gaze turned inward. He did not even sharpen his knives. Sif exchanged a raft of insults with someone’s low voice, occasionally sounding as formal as if she was flyting in the great hall, occasionally bursting out in laughter.

Once Thor awoke in the fullest dark and red eyes gleamed out at him from the corner. He reached out a hand, but no returning hand came to grasp it. Thor felt the waves of chill over his trembling palm as if a frost giant sat just out of reach.

****

A bird was chirping insistently. Thor blearily regarded the window and its beaming golden light. Someone was sitting in the chair, a gray and fidgety someone. Thor yawned and tried to stretch.

“Hel says she loves me, do you think I should believe her?” Balder burst out.

Thor squeezed his eyes shut and opened one and then the other. “Good morning?”

“Oh.” Balder seemed to recall himself. “Yes. Uh.”

He gestured helplessly at a pitcher of water. Thor drank until he’d drained it and then blinked owlishly at Balder’s gray form. “Hel what now?”

Balder was wringing his ghostly hands. “She says all these things and it’s almost as if she plucks them from my mind…can she do that? I can’t think right when I’m around her.”

Thor groggily tried to parse that.

“But then…” Balder ruminated. “It’s easier being down with her than up here with all these seiðmaðr.” He gestured around the room and Thor followed his hand, bewildered. Thor presumed someone had magicked the longhouse into being despite Balder’s discomfort. Balder was giving him a piqued look.

“I confess myself unsure as to why you are asking me these things.” Thor admitted with a sigh.

“Because you’re accustomed to…you know…” Balder lowered his voice. “Difficult people.”

Thor pressed his fingertips to his forehead, attempting to stave off a mighty headache. “Speaking of difficult people…what of our brothers and sisters?”

“Oh.” Balder ducked his head, managing to look very boyish again, despite his travails. “We returned together. We were back in Gladsheim.”

He looked out at the sunlight. “…it was the same as it was before, the food, the mead. But we rose at dawn and the monsters never came. We waited all day, but they didn’t come. They haven’t come back. We went back inside and this old man started telling us the most wonderful stories. He said that the monsters came from the nightmares of the realms’ warriors, but that the warriors who survived Ragnarök sleep more deeply.”

Thor raised his chin and took a deep breath. His limbs still lay heavy, but his heart fluttered more buoyantly for a moment.  “And at some point, Hel came for you?”

That set Balder off and running once again.

“She says she can resurrect me, if that’s what I want.” Balder frowned. “She says the realms are exceptionally porous right now.”

“Is that what you want?” Thor cupped his head in his hand and watched Balder’s thoughts pass over his face.

“Perhaps.” Balder wrinkled his nose. “She’s _very_ interesting though. I’d miss our talks.”

Balder sat silently for a while, lost in thought while Thor began to drowse.

“Do you think…it’s…the same…if you’re dead?” Balder asked slowly.

Thor pretended to be asleep. On the most vital, virile day of his life, he could not have attempted to answer _that._

****

Once when he awoke, he thought he was dreaming or had ascended to some fresh afterlife: Heid was sitting next to him, her forehead buried in the coverlet next to his hip.

“Heid?” He grated, trying out his dry, swollen mouth.

“Hmmmmph?” She grunted interrogatively, but did not raise her head.

“I thought you dead.” He rasped at the fall of her red-gold hair.

“You would, you great lump.” Heid sat up and snorted in her usual ladylike fashion. “You think the fire demons would succeed, where the Aesir never did? If I told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times: I’m the _Phoenix of the Vanir_.”

Thor nodded gravely at her spate of exasperated words. “You are also my cousin and I love you very much.”

She blinked at him and couldn’t stop herself bursting out in a chuckle. “Idiot. **You** nearly died.”

Thor nodded again and made an abbreviated shrug. Just that alone almost exhausted him. “Obviously not the worst thing that could happen, Bright One.”

“Indeed.” She smiled and pressed a cool hand to his forehead. “And who would know better than us?”

****

It was just after dawn when he awoke to find Loki slumped in Frigga’s usual perch, fingering the wooden arms of the chair and scowling at the low ceiling. Thor tried to keep his breath from hitching. Loki lowered his eyes to gaze at Thor, but he did not move or speak.

They stared at each other until it felt like another age of the world had passed. Thor wanted to un-stopper himself like a bottle, to say all manner of foolish things, but he did not want Loki’s first words to be scoffing or mocking.

It came to him, the only thing he could say. He gave Loki a blank smile.

“So who are you then?” Thor asked politely.

Loki blinked a dozen times in rapid succession and Thor could hear the wood creak under his tightening fingernails. Thor assayed what he hoped was a winsome grin.

“Oh, that was…” Loki smiled tightly. “Not funny in the slightest, you ass.”

“It was a _little_ funny.” Thor held up his thumb and forefinger.

“You’re better then.” Loki stood up and looked at him through half-lidded eyes. “I needn’t hang about.”

“Of course not.” Thor rolled onto his back and folded his arms over his chest. “I know you must have far more important things to do.”

He tried to keep his lips from twitching as he stared at the ceiling. Loki still stood an arm’s length from the door and a full pace from the bed and he seemed genuinely torn between swanning off insouciantly and giving in to wretched sentiment. After a moment, he sighed and his shoulders slumped.

Loki sat down on the bed, throwing the coverlet back with an abbreviated flourish.

“You win, Odinson.” Loki said softly. “As ever. As always.

“Yes, I certainly…” Thor raised two fingers to stroke Loki’s arm to the elbow, marveling at the feeling of weakness lodged deep in his bones. “…feel victorious. About as victorious as a drowned kitten.”

“So that is all it takes to lay you low?” Loki’s lip twisted. “A bit of misadventure and mayhem in Jotunheim and Niflheim? Then…what was it? Three years of starving while fighting the eternal battle and then the rather small matter of world’s end. And your ill-fated attempt to drink the sea.” Loki sighed and sucked his teeth. “Thin-blooded Aesir.”

“Indeed.” Thor could muster enough energy to grin. “Perhaps you can magic me up a crutch to lean on.”

Loki conjured a handful of his signature green flame. He balled his fist and the light was quickly snuffed out.  “To be uncomfortably honest, that’s about all I can do at the moment.”

Loki’s eyes were dark and unreadable as he regarded his hands mockingly, “This last battle seems to have drained us both to our dregs.”

“Then you can carve me a crutch.” Thor offered softly. Loki didn’t smile, but his weight on the bed seemed to get more solid as he settled.

“Can you sit up?” Loki asked, his wrist cool against the dip of Thor’s waist.  

Thor shook his head.

“Then I must come down.” Loki murmured against his lips.

****

“Where’s Mjölnir?”

Thor shrugged.

Loki poked him. “Answer me.”

“I don’t know.” Thor tried to glare but his eyes kept shutting. “Why do you care?”

“I think the better question.” Loki continued dryly. “Is why don’t you?”

“Around and about.” Thor shrugged again. “She may be at the bottom of the deep blue sea, maybe children are playing with her. It doesn’t matter. If I need her, she’ll come.”

He had never anticipated a time when he would not have felt unmoored without the comforting weight of the hammer on his hip. But he had gone long days without thinking of her at all and he did not feel that she was yearning for him. He liked to think of her in the hands of a child, a tool to shape castles in the sand.

Loki was silent for a time, and then he huffed a short laugh. “This truly is a new world. A blank slate, ready for spoiling.”

“Indeed.” Thor flexed his hands and cracked his knuckles. “Frigga has said it will be long days before we are needed again.”

“Innocence grows, flowers, breeds and corrupts.” Loki contemplated Thor’s scarred knuckles, squeezing the joint above Thor’s opal ring.

“Yes.” Thor’s hand began to tremble slightly. “I find it quite comforting that even we may change. Even we may die.”

Loki turned his head away sharply. So sharply that Thor might have flinched if he hadn’t realized that Loki was just trying to hide egregious sentiment. He lay quietly as Loki regained his brutal hold on his emotions. After a moment, Loki’s breath deepened and Thor knew Loki felt himself safely contained again.

“I like this.” Thor stroked Loki’s back, fingering the light weave of the green tunic Loki wore. It was as soft as the thick fall of Loki’s hair and he could easily feel the taut muscle and hard bone beneath it.

Loki chuckled and shrugged under Thor’s hand. “Your mother has been over-employed, spinning and weaving to clothe us. She even pressed Tyr into carding wool.”

Thor brushed a hand over his own stomach, feeling the thin cloth covering him. He had soft breeches, but no boots and in comparison to his usual layers of leather and armor, he felt rather like a snail out of its shell. Loki echoed his thoughts.

“We have always gone about so well-accoutered for war.” Loki sighed, but he did not sound unhappy. “I feel like I’ve been traipsing around in smallclothes.”

“It suits you.” Thor leaned into Loki’s shoulder, breathing in his scent. He remembered the first time he’d run his hands through Loki’s hair on one sojourn to Jötunheim, only to belatedly discover that was where skin-clad frost giants kept their spare blades. Loki hadn’t been the least apologetic as Thor sucked his bloodied fingers.

“Come and see.” Loki stood and went to lean on the doorjamb. Thor crossed to lean on the other side, looking out. He wanted to sit on the broad bench against the wall, but forced himself to stand on unsteady legs. Thor noticed the other houses for the first time, homely cabins clustered like a simple peasant village. They were half-way up a great mountain and the tender young world stretched out to the horizon. No golden cities. No libraries. No citadels or barracks, either.

Loki handed him a slice of apple and Thor felt a little stronger as he chewed.

“Come here, you look like a haystack.” Loki drew a comb from his sleeve and beckoned Thor down to a seat half in sunshine and half in shade. Thor sighed as he lowered himself, more than a few steps at a time left him breathless. Or perhaps it was Loki’s gentle hands tugging on his scalp.

Nothing marred the greensward and grass and flowers had already started to throw a colorful sheen over the gray earth. Thor listened to the birds chirping and marveled at them. He closed his eyes to feel the sunshine on the delicate skin of his eyelids and sighed for simple pleasure.

“Those are very fine goats.” Thor observed idly after a time. Loki glanced up at them and shrugged.

“I did promise you once that I would give you goats.” Loki continued combing out Thor’s hair and began to plait it. “Though these are rather worthless. I call them Tanngnjóstr and Tanngrisnir.”

Thor nodded in approval. The goats were much larger than average and they cropped at the grass hesitantly, stopping and staring about with distinctly un-goat-like mannerisms. Thor noticed that their eyes were oddly red instead of the usual gold.

A sudden shadow passed over them and Jormungandr swept her long neck down to snatch one of the beasts off the grass, ignoring its panicked scream. She ate it with gusto, crushing its spine with a snap.

“Rather, they _were_ fine goats.” Thor sighed as Jormungandr chomped down on the second hapless, bleating creature.

“No, it’s all right. See…” Loki jerked his chin as Jormungandr spat out the bones neatly. “I’ve enchanted them to resurrect themselves from bones. They’ll be right as rain by tomorrow.”

“And she’ll eat them again.”  Thor observed after a moment.

“So everyone’s happy.” Loki said blandly.

Thor made a face. “I don’t think _everyone’s_ happy.” A thought struck him. “Is that the only enchantment you’ve laid on them?”

“Maybe. I don’t remember.” Loki cocked his head and shrugged.

Thor had a sudden suspicion and was opening his mouth to spill out reproaches when Loki nudged him impatiently.

“You recall my kennings in Valhalla?” Loki tossed his hair.

“Ye-es.” Thor started.

“Was I Loki the Ever Merciful? Loki the Always Compassionate?” Loki continued dryly.

“No.” Thor pursed his lips.

“Indeed.” Loki made a fearsome face. “Let us not be forgetting who I am.”

“It is not _I_ who is going about forgetting things.” Thor returned peevishly.

Loki paused and he seemed to grow softer as his minor pique melted away. He raised one shoulder, shifted his weight back and looked at Thor, considering.

“No, that is true.” Loki folded his lower lip under his teeth. He blinked at Thor, obviously trying to look as harmless as possible. “There’s so, so much I’ve forgotten.”

He sighed and tilted his head down to look up through his eyelashes.

Thor knew he was making a ridiculous expression, trying to hide his grin. “Perhaps we should…get re-acquainted.”

For a moment he thought Loki might demur or ask him if he felt strong enough. But Loki just examined him thoughtfully, as if to fill his eyes first. He tugged on the end of one of Thor’s braids.

“This. I forgot this. That seems unconscionable.” Loki stroked the tips of his fingers over the jut of Thor’s collarbone.

“Ah-ah, yes.” Thor ducked his head involuntarily against the tickle. “I did not like to say so, but that is exactly the word.”

Loki pressed his lips together quickly, tapping them with one finger. Then he reached out to hook the collar of Thor’s tunic and stretched it down. “Hmmmmm.”

“Hmmmmm?” Thor twitched as Loki traced another ticklish spot.

“It begins to come back to me.” Loki said diffidently. “But I think I need…the full picture.”

Loki stood and heaved Thor to his feet. Thor swayed a bit upright, feeling a sudden giddy vertigo. Loki quickly wrapped his arms around Thor’s waist and tried to anchor Thor’s prodigious weight. “Are you well?”

“Just a moment, I’ll get my sea-legs.” Thor breathed into Loki’s hair. Loki wrestled him inside to a seat on the edge of the bed and pulled off Thor’s thin shoes. Then he stood and cupped Thor’s jaw for a moment, gazing down into his face in a way that should have felt uncomfortable. But Thor just let the weight of his head rest in Loki’s palm, feeling Loki trace his eyebrow gently. He sighed in contentment and Loki leaned down for a closer look.

This one I remember.” Loki licked Thor’s upper lip while teasing the lower with his thumb. “This one, yes. No. Yes. No-o.” He punctuated his words with kisses.

“Be sure.” Thor murmured through the onslaught. He was trying to writhe out of his tunic without missing a kiss. Loki did something clever with his fingers, rucking the fabric so that Thor never felt a lack. He nibbled Thor’s neck, licking his salt.

“I remember this.” Loki chuckled delightedly as he laid his palm flat on Thor’s chest. Loki had long fingers; when he spread his palm, his thumb and pinky finger nudged both of Thor’s nipples. He stroked the hard ridges along Thor’s belly with the backs of his knuckles and hooked his hand into Thor’s laces with an air of bravado that made Thor chuckle. Thor twisted his hips as he helped Loki pick the laces free and pull his breeches off.

“You remember this?” Thor teased when he was bare to Loki’s eyes. He slid his palms down the taut planes of his belly to the join of his legs, showing off.   

Loki tried to sound flippant but Thor could hear the low catch in his voice. “I think I have an atavistic memory of this.”  

“I don’t know what that means.” Thor replied just to provoke Loki into a growl as his hands hardened under Thor’s cheeks and he jerked Thor’s hips up for a lingering taste. He seemed to savor the hot flesh with such relish that Thor had a moment where he shivered under Loki’s tongue wondering if his licks would turn to bites. After a moment, Loki broke off, breathing hard, pressing his forehead into the long muscle of Thor’s thigh as if overcome by sudden bashfulness.

Thor had always found it meltingly stimulating how Loki could shift so rapidly from savage to shy.  And it was only ever here, in the space between the two of them that he could play this role, the sensuous wanton, hard muscle gone pliant and squeezable, his knees loose. He weaved his fingers through Loki’s thick hair to stroke the delicate curve where Loki’s skull met his neck.

At once he felt Loki’s inhalations deepen as he took long breaths of Thor’s scent. That would make him crazy, Thor knew from long experience. Nothing was better calculated to drive Loki into a frenzy. He spread his legs a little wider.

Loki surged up, marble cool and hard between Thor’s thighs, one hand clutching the curve of Thor’s ass, the other snatching a full handful of hair.

“Give me-“ Loki snarled, so bestial that it was barely words.

Thor gritted his teeth and panted fiercely. “Take it.”

****

“Did you really think I would betray you at the last?” Loki asked this as if he were asking Thor how they should break their fast.

“No. Never had a doubt.” Thor mumbled into Loki’s sharp shoulder blades.

“Truly?” Loki arched his neck to look sideways at him. “I did. It was pretty touch and go for a moment there. “

Thor growled and kissed Loki until he had no breath to chuckle and his lips were too soft to smirk. “In the end, I don’t think it would have mattered.”

“Ah.” Loki looked up at the ceiling. “That fond of snow-shoeing and bondage, are you?”

Thor shivered a little, imagining himself a bound thrall in the cruel jötunn empire. “Even then, I would have been the water, battering your rocks.”

“This metaphor is escaping me.” Loki said dryly.

“You were ever trying to teach me that there is no _never_ , there is no _always_.” Thor tasted Loki’s cheekbone. “But…given enough time…I would have shown you that there is one _never_ , there is one _always_.” Thor buried his nose in Loki’s hair. “And that is: I will **never** leave you. I will **always** …”

This time it was Loki’s turn to growl and kiss him breathless. Thor rolled his shoulders back, arched his spine and offered himself up to be nibbled on, squeezed and savored. Loki’s teeth were gentle but firm as his lips and breath smoothed the latticework of bites he left across Thor’s chest and neck. Again Loki seemed to have no interest in his own pleasure, he just consumed every gasp, every bitten lip, every twitch and shudder like it was a feast.  His hands were as strong and fluid as water as they poured over every inch of Thor’s tender spots.

Loki mouthed Thor’s chin as he made Thor cant his hips up as he spent, his teeth rasping against Thor’s beard. Thor panted as all his muscles went liquid, feeling Loki trace one thumb over Thor’s cheekbone. The cool of Loki’s finger swiping away the pearls of sweat and dark flush of climax always made him feel peculiarly blessed. It felt delicious to press into Loki’s coolness when his blood was blooming hot under his skin. 

Loki watched him so avidly, so hungrily that he could not drift off to sleep. Thor blinked pleasure-heavy eyes and tried to make a joke. “Some parts of this world are much like the last.”

Loki chuckled agreeably. “It is well. Though I confess myself glad to be free of the late generations of schemers.” Loki mused, running one ticklish finger down Thor’s belly. “Those fools were ever trying to make us rivals when we are one.”

Thor went silent and still until Loki was moved to lean back and ask, “What?”

“I think that might be the most honey-sweet thing you’ve ever said, Silvertongue.” Thor folded his arms across his chest, ignoring Loki’s protest. “I am overcome with both emotion and nerves.”

“You are the most ridiculous creature.” Loki tried to insinuate himself under Thor’s heavy arm again. Thor clutched his own shoulders and made a show of shivering with alarm. Loki pawed and pinched at him in an effort to get back into an embrace.

Finally Loki stood up and sighed. He glanced sideways at the sun streaming in the window and began to change.

“Loki, what are you doing?” Thor protested, heaving himself to his feet to wobble to Loki’s side and clap hands over Loki’s red jötunn eyes which were already screwing shut in the golden light of afternoon. Thor cupped his palm over Loki’s browbone, trying to shield Loki’s eyes and clutch him at the same time.

“See?” Loki clutched him back and whispered into Thor’s hairline “You will not let me be dazzled, am I to let you stagger about in darkness?”

For a moment, Thor felt the full flush of his strength return. He still circled Loki gently in his embrace, even as his knees stopped trembling. Loki laid his palm over Thor’s breastbone and Thor felt a flare of warmth and tingling, like magic.

Loki murmured, his breath cool in Thor’s ear, “There is a huge hole inside me and no one, not even you can fill it. _But you always try._ And you have always tried.”

Thor pressed against him as if he could fuse their flesh like one of Hel’s creations. Loki dug his fingers into Thor’s hair, tight to his scalp, setting all his careful plaits awry. Thor reveled in the feel of Loki’s cool smooth skin. Thor kissed and nuzzled at him until Loki’s was the only taste in his mouth, the only scent in his nose. That he would not forget, as long as the mighty ash grew.

****

“You can ask me, you know.” Loki picked at his fingernails idly. “I won’t laugh.”

“Ask what?” Thor flushed a little as Loki’s words called him out of his reverie. He bent his knee just a little, that his half-tumescent cock would be less obvious. But Loki reached down and plucked at Thor’s nipple with two fingers making him curse and harden and swat Loki’s importuning fingers away.

Loki grinned. “I know what you’re thinking about, Thor Odinson. I am intimately well-versed in the order and nature of your thoughts. Did you really think a sojourn in Valhalla would rend that particular talent from me?”

“What am I thinking about then?” Thor said grumpily, rolling onto his stomach. He pressed his now fully-hard cock into the solid cushioning of the bed and mouthed at Loki’s ribs.

“You’re imagining just what it would have been like to be my most-favored concubine in a realm of eternal ice and snow.” Loki reached out to tug Thor’s beard. “You are imagining it in _excruciating detail_.”

Thor considered denying it, then leaned into Loki’s thigh as he traced a finger over the back of Loki’s knee. “I wonder…would you have been a cruel master with the odd moments of kindness or a kind master who was occasionally cruel?”

“Well.” Loki raised one eyebrow and twisted his fingers into Thor’s mane of hair once again. “Let me just show you.”

 

 **The end** (or is it?) 

 

 

Excerpted from ‘The Hammer of the Aesir’ (by Loki Laufeyson)

 

> He is more than mighty
> 
> He wields a mighty blade
> 
> His back is strong as iron
> 
> And his blows are never stayed
> 
> I have no cause to worry
> 
> And at my foes I jeer
> 
> Great need never yet
> 
> Has been left un-met
> 
> By the Hammer of the Aesir
> 
>  
> 
> Darkness came upon us
> 
> The light was hard to find
> 
> Enemies came before us
> 
> Just as many from behind
> 
> He came roaring in the darkness
> 
> Gripping a mighty spear
> 
> I bowed my head
> 
> I quaked in dread
> 
> Of the Hammer of the Aesir
> 
>  
> 
> He said, ‘it may seem dire
> 
> You may well be sore afraid’
> 
> ‘You may find yourself affrighted
> 
> Like a maiden yet unmade.’
> 
> I said ‘my lord, I know you.
> 
> So what have we to fear?’
> 
> And he just laughed
> 
> And gripped his haft
> 
> The Hammer of the Aesir…

 

 

The rest has been redacted for your gentle ears...this isn't Valhalla. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story...this series rather...has been both more fun and more draining than any fanfiction that I've written thus far in my decades-long odyssey as a fangirl. Which is saying something. I really appreciate all of you who have joined me on the journey. Your appreciation makes all the late nights worthwhile. 
> 
> Discerning readers will note that this chapter title has dual meanings. Ash is naturally the by-product of burning...the Yggdrasil is also reckoned to be an ash.


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